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LIFE 



OF 



JAMES BUCHAITAN 



Fifteenth Pkesident of the United States 



BY 

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS 



7.V TWO VOLUMES 
Vol. I. 



NEW YORK 
HARPER k BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1883 






\% VSoo 



Copyright, 1883, by George Ticknor Ccrtis. 



All Hghts reserved. 



Stereotyped h>j Smith J: McDougal. 



PREFACE. 



-VJOTWITHSTANDIXG the proverbial tendency of bio- 
_L.l graj)liers to contract what Macaulay lias called "the 
disease of admiration," no one who can lay claim to any 
strength of mind need allow the fear of such an imputation to 
prevent him from doing justice to a public man whose life, for 
whatever reason, he has undertaken to write. But that my 
readers may judge of the degree of my exposure to this malady, 
a frank explanation of the circumstances under which I came 
to write this work is due both to them and to myself. 

In the summer of 1880, the executoi'S and the nearest sunav- 
ing relatives of Mr. Buchanan asked me to allow them to place 
in my hands the whole collection of his private papers, with a 
view to the preparation of a biographical and historical work 
concerning his public and private life. This duty could not 
have been undertaken by me, without an explicit understanding 
that I was to treat the subject in an entirely independent and 
impartial spirit. To be of much value, the work, as I conceived, 
must necessarily be, to some extent, a history of the times in 
which Mr. Buchanan acted an important part as a public man. 
IMoreover, although I had been for far the greater part of this 
period an attentive observer of public affairs, I had no special 
interest in Mr. Buchanan's fame, and was never personally 
known to him. I could have no object, therefore, of any kind, 
tr subserve, save the truth of history ; nor did the representa- 



jy PREFACE. 

tives of Mr, Buchanan desire me, in assuming the office of his 
biographer, to undertake that of an official eulogist. I have 
souo-ht for information, aside from the papers of the late Presi- 
dent, in many quarters where I knew that I could obtain it ; but 
the opinions, inferences and conclusions contained in these vol- 
umes are exclusively my own, excepting in the few instances in 
which I have expressly cjuoted those of other persons. No one 
has exercised or endeavored to exercise the slightest influence 
over what I have said of Mr, Buchanan, and I acknowledge and 
have felt no loyalty to his reputation beyond the loyalty that 
every man owes to justice and to truth, 

I have thought it proper to say this much concerning my 
relations to the family of Mr, Buchanan, for two reasons. The 
President, by his will, appointed as his biographer a personal 
friend, the late Mr. William B, Keed of Philadelphia, in whom 
he had great confidence, and who Avas a very accomplished 
writer. But Mr. Keed was prevented by private misfortunes 
from doing anything more than to examine Mr. Buchanan's 
voluminous papers, and to prepare two introductory chapters of 
the intended Life. Of these I could make no use, as they did 
not accord with my method of treating the subject. After Mr, 
Reed had surrendered the task which he had undertaken, the 
papers were placed in the hands of the late Judge John Cad- 
wallader of Philadelphia, another personal friend of the President. 
This gentleman died before he had begun to write the proposed 
work ; and when the papers, which had been placed in his hands 
by the executors, came into mine, along with another large col- 
lection from Wheatland, I had to subject them to an entirely 
new arrangement and classification, before anything could be 
done. In resorting to a stranger as the biographer of Mr. 
Buchanan, his executors and friends did what circumstances 
had rendered unavoidable. The only assurance I can give is 
that I have had no reason to be otherwise than strictly faithful 



P K E F A C E . 



to what I believe to be the truth concerning the whole of Mr. 
Buchanan's career. 

The other reason for a candid explanation of my relation to 
this subject will occur to every one. Mr. Buchanan's adminis- 
tration of the Government during the four years which pre- 
ceded the commencement of our civil war, is a topic upon which 
friends and foes have widely differed. But no unprejudiced per- 
son who now examines the facts can doubt that, in many minds, 
injustice has been done to him. Perhaps this was inevitable, 
considering that a sectional civil war, of vast magnitude and 
attended with great bitterness, followed immediately after his 
retirement from office, when a political party whicli had been in 
opposition to his administration came for the first time into the 
full control of the Federal Government. It was in the nature 
of things— or rather, I should say, it was in the nature of man- 
that those who succeeded to the Government should have charged 
upon the outgoing administration that they had been remiss in 
their public duty ; and that under the example of men in high 
places, there should have grown up a popular belief that Mr. 
Buchanan fovored the secession of the Southern States, either 
purposely, or by lack of the proper energy to meet it in its inci- 
pient stages. Charges of this kind found popular credence in a 
time of unexampled excitement ; and since the w^ar was ended, 
there have been, and doubtless there still are, many persons 
who regard President Buchanan as a man who could have 
saved the country from a frightful civil war, if he had had the 
wish and the energy to nip Secession in the bud. 

Such, at all events, were the reproaches wdth which many of 
his countrymen pursued him into retirement, and continued to 
follow him to his grave. Denied as he was a hearing while he 
lived, because the perils and turmoils of the immediate present 
unfitted men to look dispassionately back into the past, he may 
well have desired that in some calmer time, wdien he had gone 



^ PREFACE. 

where there is neither ignorance, nor prejudice, nor rancor, some 
one should " read liis cause aright to the unsatisfied." To that 
better time he looked forward with an undoubting faith in the 
ultimate justice of his country. I believe that the time which 
he anticipated has come ; and that nothing more than a proper 
examination of the facts is now needed, to insure for him all 
the vindication that he could ever have desired. 

In regard to this and to every other part of his life, I have 
found it an interesting task to trace the history of a man whose 
public and private character were always pure, whose patriotism 
was co-extensive with his whole country, whose aims were high, 
and who was habitually conscientious in the discharge of every 
obhgation. My estimate of his abilities and power as a states- 
man has risen with every investigation that I have made ; and 
it is, in my judgment, not too much to say of him as a Presi- 
dent of the United States, that he is entitled to stand very high 
on the catalogue— not a large one— of those who have had the 
moral courage to encounter misrepresentation and obloquy, 
rather than swerve from the line of duty which tbeir convictions 
marked out for them. 

I must say a few words in explanation of my method of 
describing important public transactions, the interest in which 
attaches both to the events and to an individual who has borne 
a chief part in them. There are two modes of historical writ- 
ino-. One is to make a narrative of the course of a foreign 
negotiation, for example, or of any other public action, with- 
out quoting despatches or documents. The other, which scarcely 
rises above the dignity of compilation, is to let the story 
be told mainly by the documents. But in biography, where 
the interest centres for the nonce in some principal actor, I 
conceive that the better course is to unite the two methods, by 
so much of description as is needful to illustrate the documents, 
and by so much of quotation as is needful to give force to the 



P E E F A C E . „•,• 

vll 



narrative. It often happens, however, that the private letters 
which a person in high official station receives or writes, are 
quite valuable to the elucidation of official papers and official 
acts, as they certainly may render a description more lively than 
it would be without them. The collection of Mr. Buchanan's 
papers is exceedingly rich in private correspondence, both with 
persons towards whom he stood in official, and with other per- 
sons towards whom he stood in only social, relations ; and I 
have drawn largely upon these materials. Whether I have 
accomplished the object at which I have aimed, the reader will 
judge. It is for me to do no more than to apprise him that I 
have endeavored to write for his instruction and his entertain- 
ment, as well as to render justice to the person whose life I have 
described. To vindicate in all things the public policy of the 
party with which he acted, has not been my aim. I have only 
sought to exhibit it in its true relation to the history of the 
times. Sincerity and strength of conviction were as character- 
istic of those to whom Mr. Buchanan was politically opposed, 
as they were of his political associates. 

It is perhaps almost superfluous for me to say that it would 
have been impracticable for me within the limits of these two 
volumes to give an account of every debate in Congress in 
which Mr. Buchanan took part, or of every transaction with 
which he was connected as a foreign minister, as Secretary of 
State, or as President. Such of his speeches as I have quoted 
at length have been selected because of the interest that still 
attaches to the subject, or some part of it, or because they illus- 
trate his powers as a debater ; and in making selections or quo- 
tations from his dij^lomatic papers, I have been unavoidably con- 
fined to those which related to critical questions in our foreig-n 
relations. It was equally impracticable for me to touch upon 
the connections which he had with numerous political persons 
in the course of a public life of forty years. I have drawn a 



Yiii PREFACE, 

necessary line, and have drawn it between tliose v.'ith whom he 
stood in some important official relation, or who occupied impor- 
tant public positions, and tliose who belong in the category of 
politicians more or less prominent and active, with whom all 
very eminent public men have more or less to do ; including the 
former and excluding the latter. But of course I have varied 
this rule in the case of friends who stood in personal rather than 
political relations with him. 

It remains for me to give a description of the materials of 
which I have made use, and to make the customary acknowl- 
edgments to those who supplied them. 

Any man who has been in public life for a long period of 
time, and has attained to the highest public stations, must ne- 
cessarily have accumulated a vast amount of materials of the 
highest importance to the elucidation of his own history and of 
the history of the times in which he has acted. Mr. Buchanan 
had a habit of preserving nearly everything that came into his 
hands. The mass of his private correspondence is enormous. I 
can hardly specify the number of letters that I have had to read, 
in order to form an adequate idea of the state of the public mind 
in the opposite sections of the Union during the period when 
he first had to encounter the secession movement. My recollec- 
tion of the condition of public opinion at such junctures was 
pretty vivid, but I could not venture to trust to it without 
examining the best evidence ; for undoubtedly the best evidence 
of public opinion was to be found in the private letters which at 
such periods reached the President from all cjuartcrs of the coun- 
try. Many hundreds of such letters have been examined, in 
order to write, and to write con-ectly, a very few pages. Mr. 
Buchanan had also another habit of great utility. Although he 
did not always keep a regular diary or journal, he rarely held an 
important conversation, or was engaged in a critical transaction, 
without writing down an account of it with his own hand 



PREFACE. ix 

immediately caffcerward. These extremely valuable memoranda 
will be found to throw great light upon many matters that have 
hitherto been left in obscurity, or have been entirely misrepre- 
sented. He was also an indefatigable letter- writer ; and of those 
of his own letters of which he did not keep copies, he procured 
many from his correspondents after his retirement to Wheat- 
land. He wrote freely, easily, and I should think rapidly. 
His familiar letters rarely received or required much correc- 
tion ; but his official productions were polished with great care. 

The principal mass of these papers, along with the public 
documents which were connected with them, was collected by 
Mr. Buchanan himself, in the interval between his retirement 
from the Presidency and his death. This collection was placed 
in my hands by his brother and executor, the Rev. Edward Y. 
Buchanan, D.D., of Philadelphia. Another large collection 
came to me from Mr. and Mrs. Henry E. Johnston, the present 
possessors of Wheatland. Mrs. Johnston enriched the collec- 
tion of papers which were sent to me from Wheatland, by 
adding to them a great quantity of her uncle's letters to herself, 
of which she kindly permitted me to take copies. 

From James Buchanan Henry, Esq., nephew of the President, 
and for some time his private secretary, and from Miss Buchanan, 
daughter of the Eev. Dr. Buchanan, I have received interesting 
contributions, which have found their place in my work. 

l^ext to these, the immediate relatives of President Buchanan, 
I am indebted to the Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, Attorney-Gen- 
eral and afterwards Secretary of State during Mr. Buchanan's 
Presidency, for important information. I am under like obliga- 
tions to Brinton Coxe and Joseph B. Baker, Esqs., of Phila- 
delphia, friends of the late President. 

And finally, from my own valued friend of many years, 
Samuel L. M. Barlow, Esq., of Xew York, I have received two 
very interesting contributions, which are quoted and credited 



J PREFACE. 

in their appropriate places. I am also under a similar obliga- 
tion to W. U. Ilensel, Esq., of Lancaster, and to George 
Plumer Smith, Esq., of Philadelphia. Nor should I omit to 
mention the name of Iliram B. Swarr, Esq., co-executor with 
Dr. Buchanan, and the confidential lawyer of the late Presi- 
dent, at Lancaster, as one who has very materially aided my 
researches. 

New York, May 1, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
1791— 1820. 

PAGE 

Birth and Parentage — Early Education and College Life — Study of tlie 

Law Admission to the Bar — Settles in Lancaster — A Volunteer in the 

War of 1813— Enters the Legislature of Pennsylvania— Early Distinc- 
tion—Professional Income— Retires from Public Life— Disappointment 
in Love— Re-enters Public Life— Elected to Congress 1 

CHAPTER II. 
1820— 1824. 

Monroe's Administration— Eminent Men in Congress— Notices of William 
Lowndes and John Randolph of Roanoke— John Sarjreant— Buchanan 
becomes a leading Debater— Bankrupt Bill— Cumberland Road— The 
Tariff. 



23 



CHAPTER III. 
1824— 1825. 

Election of John Quincy Adams— The "Bargain and Corruption"— 
Unfounded Charge — General Jackson's erroneous Impression — His 
Correspondence with Mr. Buchanan 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
1825— 1826. 

Bitter Opposition to the Administration of John Quincy Adams— Bill for 
the Relief of the Revolutionary Officers — The Panama Mission— Inci- 
dental Reference to Slavery 57 

CHAPTER V. 
1827— 1829. 

Great Increase of General Jackson's Popularity — " Retrenchment " made 
a Political Cry— Debate on the Tariff— Buchanan on Internal Improve- 
ments The Interests of Navigation — The Cumberland Road again 

Discussed — Ineligibility of a President 70 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE VI. 
1829— 1831. 

PAGE 

TLe first Election of General Jackson — Buchanan again electea to the 
House of Representatives — He becomes Chairman of the Judiciary Com- 
mittee — Impeachment of Judge Peck — Buchanan defeats a Repeal of 
the 25th Section of the Judiciary Act — Proposed in Pennsylvania as a 
Candidate for the Vice-Presidency — Wishes to retire from Public Life — 
Fitness for great Success at the Bar 94 

CHAPTER VII. 
1831— 1833. 

John Randolph of Roanoke made Minister to Russia— Failure of Mr, 
Randolph's Health — The Mission offered to Mr. Buchanan — His 
Mother's Opposition to his Acceptance — Embarks at New York and 
arrives at Liverpool — Letters from England — Journey to St. Peters- 
burg — Correspondence with Friends at Home 138 

CHAPTER VIII. 
1832— 1833. 

Negotiation of Treaties — Count Nesselrode — His characteristic Manage- 
ment of opposing Colleagues — The Emperor Nicholas — His sudden 
Announcement of his Consent to a Commercial Treaty — Why no Treaty 
concerning Maritime Rights was made — Complaints about the American 
Press — Baron Sacken's imprudent Note — Buchanan skillfully exonerates 
his Government — Sensitiveness of the Emperor on the subject of 
Poland 161 

CHAPTER IX. 
1832— 1833. 

General Jackson's second Election — Grave public Events at Home 
reflected in Mr. Buchanan's Letters from his Friends — Feelings of Gen- 
eral Jackson towards the " Nullifiers " — Movements in Pennsylvania 
for electing Mr. Buchanan to the Senate of the United States — He 
makes a Journey to Moscow — Return to St. Petersburg— Death of his 
Mother — Singular Interview with the Emperor Nicholas at his 
Audience of Leave 183 

CHAPTER X. 
1833. 

Doparturo from St. Petersburg — Journey to Paris — Princess Lieven — 
Pozzo di Borgo — Due de Broglie — General Lafayette — Louis Philippe — 
Arrival in London — Dinners at Prince Lieven's and Lord Palmerston's — 
Prince Talleyrand 217 



CONTENTS. xiii 

CHAPTEK XI. 
1833— 1836. 

PAGE 

Mt. Bucliaiian returns Home — Greeting from General Jackson — Elected 
to the Senate of the United States — State of Parties — The great Whig 
Leaders in the Senate — Peril of a War with France 227 

CHAPTEE XII. 

1835-1837. 

Kemoval of Executive Officers — Benton's " Expunging" Resolution 281 

CHAPTER XIII. 
1836. 

First Introduction of the Subject of Slavery in the Senate, during the 
Adininistration of Jackson — Petitions for its Abolition in tlie District 
of Columbia — The Right of Petition vindicated by Buchanan — Incen- 
diary Publications — Admission of Michigan into the Union — Statuary 
for the Capitol — Affairs of Texas 315 

CHAPTER XIV. 
1837— 1840. 

Bill to prevent the Interference of Federal Officers with Elections — Devo- 
tion of the Followers of Jackson — The WTiig Party less compact in 
consequence of the Rivalry between Mr. Clay and Mr. W^ebster — Retro- 
spective Review of the Bank Question — The Specie Circular — Great 
Financial Disasters 378 

CHAPTER XV. 
1837— 1841. 

Mr. Van Buren's Presidency— The Financial Troubles accumulating— 
Remedy of the Independent Treasury — Buchanan on the Causes of 
Specie Suspension, and the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States- 
Great Political Revolution of 1840— Buchanan declines a Seat in Mr. 
Van Buren's Cabinet 418 

CHAPTER XVI. 
1841— 1842. 

Death of President Harrison— Breach between President Tyler and the 
Wliigs— Tyler's Vetoes— Buchanan's Reply to Clay on the Veto Power— 
His Opposition to the Baukrui^t Act of 1841 458 



Xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVII. 
1843— 1844. 

PAGE 

Bucbanan elected to the Senate for a Third Term — Efforts of his Pennsyl- 
VTiuia Friends to have him nominated for the Presidency — Motives of 
his Withdrawal from the Canvass — The Baltimore Democratic Conven- 
tion of 1844 nominates Mr. Polk — The Old Story of "Bargain and 
Corruption " — Private Correspondence 515 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

1842— 1849. 

Harriet Lane 531 

CHAPTER XIX. 
1844— 1845. 

Annexation of Texas — Election of President Polk — The Department of 
State accepted by Mr. Buchanan , 543 

CHAPTER XX. 
1845— 1846. 

The Oregon Controversy — Danger of a War with England — Negotiation 
for a Settlement of a Boundary — Private Correspondence 551 

CHAPTER XXI. 
1845— 1848. 

Origin of the War with Mexico — Efforts of Mr. Polk's Administration to 
prevent it 579 

CHAPTER XXII. 
1848— 1849. 

Central America — The Monroe Doctrine, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. 619 



LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



CHAPTER I. 

1791— 1820. 

BIRTH Airo PABENTAGE— EARLY EDUCATION AND COLLEGE LIFE — STUDY 
OF THE LAW — ADMISSION TO THE EAR — SETTLES IN LANCASTER — A 
VOLUNTEER IN THE WAR OF 1812 — ENTERS THE LEGISLATURE OF 
PENNSYLVANIA — EARLY DISTINCTION — PROFESSIONAL INCOME — RE- 
TIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE — DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE — RE-ENTERS 
PUBLIC LIFE — ELECTED TO CONGRESS. 

A UTOBIOGEAPHY, when it exists, usually furnishes the 
~L\. most interesting and reliable information of at least the 
early life of any man. Among the papers of Mr. Buchanan, 
there remains a fragment of an autobiography, without date, 
written however, it is supposed, many years before his death. 
This sketch, for it is only a sketch, ends with the year 1816, 
when he was at the age of twenty-five. I shall quote from it, 
in connection with the events of this part of his life, adding 
such further elucidations of its text as the other materials 
within my reach enable me to give. 

The following is the account which Mr. Buchanan gives of 
his birth and parentage : 

" My father, James Buchanan, was a native of the county Donegal, in 
the kingdom of Irehmd. His family was respectable ; but their pecuniary 
circumstances were limited. He emigrated to the United States before the 
date of the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain ; having sailed 

from in the brig Providence, bound for Philadelphia, in 1783. He 

was then in the twenty-second year of his age. Immediately after his 
arrival in Philadephia, he proceeded to the house of his maternal uncle, 
Mr. Joshua Russel, in York county. After spending a short time there, 
he became an assistant in the store of Mr. John Tom, at Stony Batter, a 
I.— 1 



a LIFE OF JAMES BUCHAI^AN. 

country place at tbe foot of the North Mountain, then in Cumberland 
(now in Franklin county.) 

" He commenced business for liimself, at the same place, about the be- 
ginning of the year 1788; and on the 16th of April, in the same year, -was 
married to Elizabeth Speer. My father was a man of practical judgment, 
and of great industry and perseverance. He had received a good English 
education, and had that kind of knowledge of mankind which prevented 
him from being ever deceived in his business. With these qualifications, 
with the facility of obtaining goods on credit at Baltimore at that early 
period, and with the advantages of his position, it being one of a very few 
spots where the people of the western counties came with jjack horses 
loaded with wheat to purchase and carry home salt and other necessaries, 
his circumstances soon improved. He bought the Dunwoodie farm for 
£1500 in 1794, and had previously purchased the property on which he 
resided at the Cove Gap. 

"I was bom aFthTs~'place on the 23d of April, 1791, being my father's 
second child.- My father moved from the Cove Gaj) to Mercersburg, a dis- 
tance of between three and four miles, in the autumn of 1796, and began 
business in Mercersburg in the autumn of 1798. For some years before his 
death, which occurred on the 11th of June, 1831, he had quite a large 
mercantile business, and devoted much of liis time and attention to super- 
intending nis farm, of which he was very fond. He was a man of great 
native force of character. He was not only respected, but beloved by 
everybody who approached him. In his youth, he held the commission of 
a justice of the peace; but finding himself so overrun with the business of 
this office as to interfere with his private affairs, he resigned his commis- 
sion. A short time before his death, he again received a commission of 
the peace from Governor Hiester. He was a kind father, a sincere friend, 
and an honest and religious man. 

"My mother, considering her limited opportunities in early life, was a 
remarkable woman. The daughter of a country farmer, engaged in house- 
hold employment from early life until after my father's death, she yet 
found time to read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read. She 
had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with ease all the pas- 
sages in her favorite authors which struck her fancy. These were Milton, 
Pope, Young, Cowper, and Thomson. I do not think, at least until a 
late period of her life, she had ever read a criticism on any one of these 
authors, and yet such was the correctness of her natural taste that she had 
selected for herself, and could repeat, every passage in them which has 
been admired. 

" She was a sincere and devoted Christian from the time of my earliest 
recollection, and had read much on the subject of theology ; and what 
she read once, she remembered forever. For her sons, as they successively 
"•rew up, she was a delightful and instructive companion. She would 
argue with them, and often gain the victory ; ridicule them in any folly or 



PARENTAGE. 3 

eccentricity ; excite their ambition, by presenting to them in glowing colors 
men who had been useful to their country or their kind, as objects of 
imitation, and enter into all their joys and sorrows. Her early habits of 
laborious industry, she could not be induced to forego — whilst she had 
anything to do. My father did everything he could to prevent her from 
laboring in her domestic concerns, but it was all in vain. I have often, 
during the vacations at school or college, sat in the room with her, and 
whilst she was (entirely from her own choice) busily engaged in homely 
domestic employments, 4iave spent hours pleasantly and instructively in 
conversing with her. She was a woman of great firmness of character and 
bore the afflictions of her later life with Christian philosophy. After my 
father's death, she lost her two sons, William and George Washington, 
two young men of great jiromise, and a favorite daughter. These afflic- 
tions withdrew her affections gradually more and more from the things of 
this world — and she died on the 14th of May, 1833, at Greensburg, in the 
calm but firm assurance that she was going home to heFTatheFlind her 
God. It was chiefly to her influence that her sons were indebted for a 
liberal education. Under Providence, I attribute any little distinction 
which I may have acquired in the world to the blessing which He con- 
ferred upon me in granting me such a mother." 

The parents of Mr. Buchanan were both of Scotch-Irish 
descent, and Presbyterians. At what time this branch of the 
Buchanan family emigrated from Scotland to Ireland is not 
known ; but John Buchanan, the grandfather of the President, 
who was a farmer in the county of Donegal in Ireland, married 
Jane Eussel, about the middle, of the last century. She was a 
daughter of Samuel Kussel, who was also a farmer of Scotch- 
Presbyterian descent in the same county. James Buchanan, 
their son, and father of the President, was brought up by his 
mother's relatives. Elizabeth Speer, the President's mother, 
was the only daughter of James Speer, who was also of Scotch- 
Presbyterian ancestry, and who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 
1756. James Speer and his wife (Mary Patterson) settled at 
first on a farm ten miles from Lancaster, and afterwards at the 
foot of the South Mountain between Chambersburg and Get- 
tysburg. It is told in some memoranda which now lie before 
me, that in 1779, James Speer left the " Covenanted Church," 
on account of difficulties with Mr. Dobbins, his pastor, and was 
afterwards admitted to full communion in the Presbyterian 
congregation under the care of the Rev. John Black. This in- 



4 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

cident sufficiently indicates the kind of religious atmosphere in 
which Mrs. Buchanan grew up ; and the letters of both parents 
to their son, from which I shall have occasion to quote fre- 
quently, afibrd abundant evidence of that deep and peculiar piety 
which characterized the sincere Christians of their denomina- 
tion. They were married on the 16th of April, 1Y88, when 
Mrs. Buchanan was just twenty-one, and her husband twenty- 
seven. Eleven children were born to them between 1789 and 
1811. James, the future President, was born April 23d, 1791. 
Of his early education and his college life, he gives this ac- 
count : 

" After having received a tolerably good English education, I studied 
the Latin and Greek languages at a school in Mercersburg. It was first 
kept by the Rev. James R. Sharon, then a student of divinity with Dr. 
John King, and afterwards by a Mr. McConnell and Dr. Jesse Magaw, 
then a student of medicine, and subsequently my iM'other-in-law. I was 
sent to Dickinson College in the fall of 1807, where I entered the junior 
class. 

" The college was in a wretched condition ; and I have often regretted 
that I had not been sent to some other institution. Tiiere was no efficient 
discipline, and the young men did pretty much as they pleased. To be a 
sober, plodding, industrious youth was to incur the ridicule of the mass of 
the students. Without much natural tendency to become dissipated, and 
chiefly from the example of others, and in order to be considered a clever 
and a spirited youth, I engaged in every sort of extravagance and mischief 
in which the greatest proficients of the college indulged. Unlike the rest 
of this class, however, I was always a tolerably hard student, and never 
was deficient in my college exercises. 

" A circumstance occurred, after I had been a year at college, which 
made a strong and lasting impression upon me. During the September 
vacation, in the year 1808, on a Sabbath moniing, whilst I was sitting in 
the room with my father, a letter was brought to him. He opened it, and 
read it, and I observed that his countenance fell. He then handed it to me 
and left th3 room, and I do not recollect that he ever afterwards spoke to me 
on the subject of it. It was from Dr. Davidson, the Principal of Dickinson 
College. He stated that, but for the respect Avhicli the faculty entertained 
for my father, I would have been expelled from college on account of dis- 
orderly conduct. That they had borne with me as best they could until 
that period ; but that they would not receive me again, and that the letter 
was written to save him the mortification of sending me back and having 
me rejected. Mortified to the soul, I at once determined upon my course. 
Dr. John King was at the time pastor of the congregation to which my 



COLLEGE LIFE. 



r)arents belonged. He came to that congregatiop shortly after the Revolu- 
Ton tndcon?.nued to be its pastor until his death. He had either n.amed 
or baptized all its members. He participated in their joys as well as their 
sorrows, and had none of the gloomy bigotry which too often passes in 
hese d^ys for superior sanctity. He was, I believe, a trustee of the col- 
leo-e, and enjoyed great and extensive influence wherever he was known. To 
him I applied with the greatest confidence in my extremity. He gave me a 
gentle lecture-the more efficient on that account. He then proposed to 
L, thatif I would pledge my honor to him to behave better at college 
than I had done, he felt such confidence in me that he ^^^^l^ pledge him- 
self to Dr. Davidson on my behalf, and he did not doubt that I would be 
permitted to return. I cheerfully complied with this condition ; Dr. King 
arrTncred the matter, and I returned to college, without any questions 
beincTasked • and afterwards conducted myself in such a manner as, at least, 
to p^'revent any formal complaint. At the public examination, previous 
to the commencement, I answered without difficulty every question which 
was propounded to me. At that time there were two honors conferred 
by the college. It was the custom for each of the two societ.es to presen 
a candidaterand the faculty decided which of them should have the first 
honor and the second was conferred upon the other candidate as a matter 
of course I had set mv heart upon obtaining the highest, and the society 
to which I belonged unanimously presented me as their candidate. As 1 
believed that this society, from the superior scholarship of its membei^ 
was entitled to both, on my motion we presented two candidates to e 
faculty The consequence was, that they rejected me altogether, gave the 
first honor to the candidate of the opposite society, and the second to 
Mr Robert Lavertv, now of Chester county, assigning as a reason tor 
reiecting my claims'that it would have a bad tendency to confer an honor 
of the college upon a student who had shown so little respect as I had 
done for the rules of the college and for the protessors. 

''I have scarcely ever been so much mortified at any occurrence of my 
life as at this disappointment, nor has friendship ever been manifes ed 
totards me in a more striking manner than by all the -embers of th 
society to which I belonged. Mr. Laverty, at once, mthe -^^^ W J^ 
ner offered to yield me the second honor, which, however, I dec ined to 
Lit The other members of the society belonging to the senior class 
wouM have united with me in refusing to speak at the approachmg com- 
Tencement, but I was unwilling to place them in this situation on my 
account, and more especially as several of them were designed for the 
nSL;. I held out myself for some time, but at last yielded on receiving 
rSnd communication from the professors. I left college, however, feeling 
but little attachment towards the Alma Mater." 

In regard to the danger of liis expulsion from the college, 
which Mr. Buchanan has frankly recorded in his autobiographi- 



C LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

cal fragment, I find no other reference to it. But I have seen 
in the note-books of his studies and in the notes which he kept 
of lectures that he attended, abundant proof that he was, as he 
says, "a tolerably hard student." He seems to have had a 
strong propensity to logic and metaphysics, and of these studies 
there are copious traces in his own handwriting. The inci- 
dent whicli he relates concerning his disappointment in not 
receiving one of the highest of the college honors at his grad- 
uating " commencement," is thus touched upon in a letter from 
his father : 

Merceesbupg, September C, 1809. 
Dear Son: — 

Yours is at hand (though without date) -which mortifies us very much 
for your disappointment, in being deprived of both honors of the college, 
especially when your prospect was so fair for one of them, and more so 
when it was done by the professors who are acknowledged by the world to 
be the best judges of the talents and merits of the several students under 
their care. I am not disposed to censure your conduct in being ambitious 
to have the first honors of the college ; but as it was thought that Mr. F. 
and yourself were best entitled to them, you and he ought to have com- 
l^ounded the matter so as to have left it to the disposition of your several 
societies, and been contented with their choice. The partiality you com- 
plain of in the professors is, no doubt, an unjust thing in them, and per- 
haps it has proceeded from some other cause than that which you are 
disposed to ascribe to them. 

Often when people have the greatest prospects of temporal honor and 
aggrandizement, they are all blasted in a moment by a fatality connected 
with men and things ; and no doubt the designs of Providence may be seen 
very conspicuously in our disappointments, in order to teach us our de- 
l^endency on Him who knows all events, and they ought to humble our 
pride and self-sufiiciency. . „ . . . I think it was a very partial decision, 
and calculated to hurt your feelings. Be that as it will, I hope you will 
have fortitude enough to surmount these things. Your great consolation 
is in yourself, and if you can say your right was taken from you by a par- 
tial spirit and given to those to whom it ought not to be given, you must 
«^ for the present submit. The more you know of mankind, the more you 
\ will distrust them. It is said the knowledge of mankind and the distrust 

1— of them are reciprocally connected """ 

I approve of your conduct in being prejjared with an oration, and if 
upon delivery it be good sense, well spoken, and your own composition, 
your audience will think well of it whether it be spoken first, or last, or 
otherwise 



STUDIES LAW. 7 

We anticipate the pleasure of seeing you sbortly, when Phope all these 
little clouds will be dissipated. 

From your loving and affectionate father, 

James Buchanak, 

Followino- Mr. Buchanaii's sketch of his early hfe, we come 
to the period immediately after he graduated from Dickinson 
College. 

I came to Lancaster to study law with the late Mr. Hopkins, in the 
month of December, 1809, and was admitted to practice in November, 
1813 I determined that if severe application would make me a good law- 
yer I should not fail in this particular; and I can say, with truth, that 1 
have never known a harder student than I was at that period of my life 
I studied law, and nothing but law, or what was essentially connected 
with it. I took pains to understand thoroughly, as tar as I was capa- 
ble everything which I read; and in order to fix it upon my memory and 
give myself the habit of extempore speaking, I almost every evening took | 
a lonely walk, and embodied the ideas which I had acquired dunng the 
day in my own language. This gave me a habit of extempore speakmg, and 
that not merely words but things. I derived great improvement from this 
practice. 

It would seem that young Buchanan remained at home with 
his parents after he had graduated until the month of Decem- 
ber, when he went to Lancaster and entered himself as a stu- 
dent at law, in the office of Mr. Hopkins. The following letters 
from his parents give all that I am able to glean respecting the 
period of his law pupilage, and the choice of a permanent resi- 
dence after he had been admitted to practice, which was, it 
seems, in Kovember, 1812. 

[fKOM mS FATHER.] 

^ March 12, 1810. 

I am very glad to hear you are so well pleased with Laucaster, 

and with the study of the law. 

I hope you will guard against the temptations that may ofler 
themselves in this way, or any other, knowing that without religion all other 
things are as trifles, and will soon pass away Your young ac- 
quaintances often talk of you, and with respect and esteem. Go on with 
your studies, and endeavor to be eminent in your profession. 

Mr. Buchanan was admitted to the bar in the year which 
saw the commencement of the war with Great Britain, under 
the Presidency of Mr. Madison. His early political principles 



8 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

were those of the Federalists, who disapproved of the war. Yet, 
as the following passages in his autobiography shoM", he was 
not backward in his duty as a citizen : * 

The first public address I ever made before the people was in 1814, a 
slaort time after the capture of Washington by the British. In common 
with the Federalists, generally, of the Middle and Southern States, whilst 
I disapproved of the declaration of war under the circumstances in which 
it was made, yet I thought it was the duty of every patriot to defend the 
country, whilst the war was raging, against a foreign enemy. The capture 
of Washington lighted up a flame of i?atriotism which pervaded the whole 
of Pennsylvania. A public meeting was called in Lancaster for the pur- 
pose of adopting measures to obtain volmiteers to march for the defence 
of Baltimore. On that occasion I addressed the people, and was among 
the first to register my name as a volunteer. We immediately formed a 
company of dragoons, and elected the late Judge Henry Shippen our cap- 
tain. We marched to Baltimore, and served under the command of Major 
Charles Sterret Ridgely, until we were honorably discharged. This com- 
pany of dragoons was the avant courier of the large force which rushed 
from Pennsylvania to the defence of Baltimore. 

Mr. Buchanan's entrance into public life is thus described by 
himself: 

In October, 1814, 1 was elected a member of the House of Representatives, 
in the Legislature, from the county of Lancaster. The same principles 
which guided my conduct in sustaining the war, notwithstanding my 
opposition to its declaration, governed my course after I became a member 
of the Legislature. An attack was threatened against the city of Philadel- 
phia. The General Government was nearly reduced to a state of bank- 
ruptcy, and could scarcely raise sufficient money to maintain the regular 
troops on the remote frontiers of the country. Pennsylvania Avas obliged 
to rely upon her own energies for the defence, and the people generally, 
of all parties, were ready to do their utmost in the cause. 

Two plans were proposed. The one was what was called the Conscrip- 
tion Bill, and similar to that which had been rejected by Congress, reported 
in the [State] Senate by Mr. Nicholas Biddle, by which it was proposed to 
divide the white male inhabitants of the State above the age of eighteen 
into classes of twenty-two men each, and to designate one man by lot from 

* Under the date of September 13, 1813, Mr. Bnchanan's father writes to him : " Tester- 
day the fast day was kept here pretty unanimously. Mr. Elliot gave us an excellent sermon, 
and spoke of the war as a judgment, and the greatest calamity that could befall a people. 
He showed it to be worse than the famine or the pestilence. In the two latter cases, he said 
God acted as the immediate agent : in that of war he acted by subordinate agents ; therefore 
the calamity was the greater." This was the tone of many Federalist sermons. 



COURSE IN THE LEGISLATURE. 9 

the numbers between the ages of eighteen and forty-live of each class, 
who should serve one year, each class being compelled to raise a sum not 
exceeding two hundred dollars, as a bounty to the conscnpt. This army 
was to be paid and maintained at the expense of the State, and its esti- 
mated cost would have been between three and three and one-half million 
of dollars per annum. The officers were to be appointed by the Gov- 
ernor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. 

The other was to raise six regiments under the authority of the State, 
to serve for three years, or during the war, and to pass efficient volunteer 
and militia laws. 

[Here tJie narrative cliamjeo to the third person.'] 

"On the 1st of February, 1815, Mr. Buchanan delivered his sentiments 
in regard to the proper mode of defending the Commonwealth, on the h\\\ 
entitled ' An act for the encouragement of volunteers for the defence of 
this Commonwealth.' He said: ' Since, then, the Congress have deserted 
us in our time of need, there is no alternative but either to protect our- 
selves by some efficient measures, or surrender up that independence which 
has been purchased by the blood of our forefathers. No American can 
hesitate which of these alternatives ought to be adopted. The invading 
enemy must be expelled from our shores ; he must be taught to respect the 
rights of freedom.' 

" Again, speaking of the Conscription Bill, he said : ' This law is cal- 
culated to be very unjust and very unequal in its effects. Whilst it will 
operate as a conscription law ujjon the poor man in the western parts of 
the State, where property is not in danger, it will be but a militia law 
with the rich man in the eastern part of the State, whose property it con- 
templates defending. The individuals in each class are, to be sure, to pay 
the two hundred dollars in proportion to their comparative wealth, as a 
bounty to the substitute or conscript. It will, therefore, be just in its 
operation among the individuals composing each class, but how will it be 
with respect to entire classes ? Twenty-two men in the city of Philadel- 
phia, whose united fortunes would be worth tvi'o million dollars, v/ould be 
compelled to pay no more than twenty-two men in the western country, 
who may not be worth the one-thousandth part of that sum .' 

" After Mr. Buchanan had stated that he would have voted for the 
Enlistment Bill, had he not been necessarily absent when it passed the 
House, he said : 'After all, I must confess, that in my opinion an efficient vol- 
unteer and militia bill, together with the troops which can be raised under 
the Voluntary Enlistment Bill, will be amply sufficient for the defence of 
the city of Philadelphia. We need not be afraid to trust to the patriotism 
or courage of the people of this country when they are invaded. Let them 
have good militia officers, and they will soon be equal to any troops of the 
world. Have not the volunteers and militia on the Niagara frontier 
fousfht in such a manner as to merit tlie gratitude of the nation ? Is it to 



10 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

be supposed that the same spirit of patriotism would animate the man 
who is dragged out by a conscription law to defend his country, that the 
volunteer or militiaman would feel ? Let us, then, pass an efficient militia 
law, and the Volunteer Bill which is now before us. Let us hold out suf- 
ficient inducement to our citizens to turn out, as volunteers. Let their 
patriotism be stimulated by self-iuterest, and I have no doubt that in the 
day of trial there will be armies of freemen in the field sufficiently large 
for our protection. Your State will then be defended at a trifling com- 
parative expense, the liberties of the people will be preserved, and their 
willingness to bear new burdens be continued.' 

" The bill having passed the Senate, was negatived in the House, on the 
3d of February, 1815, by the decisive vote of 51 to 36. It was entitled 
'An act to raise a military force for the defence of this Commonwealth.' 
The Senate and the House thus differed in regard to the best mode of 
defending the Commonwealth ; the one being friendly to the Conscription 
Bill, and the other to the Voluntary Enlistment and Volunteer Bill. All 
agreed upon the necessity of adopting efficient means for this pui-pose. 
Before any final action was had upon the subject, the news of peace arrived, 
and was officially communicated by Governor Snyder to the Legislatui-e 
on the 17th February, 1815." 

So open and decided was I in my course in favor of defending the coun- 
try, notwithstanding my disapproval of the declaration of war, that I dis- 
tinctly recollect that the late William Beale, the shrewd, strong-minded, 
and influential Democratic Senator from Mifflin county, called upon me, and 
urged me strongly during the session to change my [political] name, and 
be called a Democrat, stating that I would have no occasion to change my 
principles. In that event, he said he would venture to predict that, should 
I live, I would become President of the United States. He was mistaken, 
for although I was friendly to a vigorous prosecution of the war, I was far 
from being a " Democrat " in principle. 



Dear Son: — 



[fKOM niS FATHER.] 

September 22, 1814. 



I received your letter of the 9th ult. from Baltimore, which stated that 
you were then honorably discharged. This news was very gratifying, as 
at that moment we received accounts that the British were making their 
attack on Baltimore, both by sea and land, and consequently our fore- 
bodings with respect to your fate were highly wound up 

You say you are iu nomination for the Assembly. I am not certain that 
it will be to your advantage, as it will lead you off from the study and 
practice of the law. If by your industry and application you could 
become eminent at the bar, that would be i^referable to being partly a 
politician and partly a lawyer. However, you must now be directed by 
circumstances and the counsel of your friends. 



COURSE IN THE LEGISLATURE. H 

The Assembly has passed a law for the benefit of the poor, 

which in fact prevents them from paying any debts, as they hold all under 
cover of the reserve made them in the law. So much for popularity at the 
expense of justice. 

October 21, 1814. 
Dear Son : — 

I received yours by Mr. Evans, informing me you were elected to the 
Assembly. The circumstances of your being so popular amongst your 
neighbors as to give you a majority over Isaac Wayne, who, I suppose, 
■was one of the highest on your ticket, is very gratifying to me, and I hope 
your conduct will continue to merit their approbation. But above all 
earthly enjoyments, endeavor to merit the esteem of heaven ; and that 
Divine Providence who has done so much for you heretofore, will never 
abandon you in the hour of trial. Perhaps your going to the Legislature 
may be to your advantage, and it may be otherwise. I hope you will 
make the best of the thing now. The feelings of parents are always alive 
to the welfare of their children, and I am fearful of this taking you from 
the bar at a time when perhaps you may feel it most 

There is now every prospect of a continuation of the war. The terms 
offered us by the British are such that no true American could comply 

with, or submit to them News has just come to this place that 

Lord Hill has arrived with 16,000 men. 

From your loving father, J. B. 

January 20, 1815. 

I am glad to find you are well pleased at being a member of the 

Legislature. Perhaps it may have the effect you mention, that of increas- 
ing your business hereafter. I am glad to hear that you mean to proceed 
with caution, and speak only when you are well prepared for the sulject 
you mean to speak upon. You are young, consequently deficient in ex- 
perience ; therefore you must supply that defect by watchfulness and appli- 
cation, never forgetting that every gift you may possess flows from that 
Being who has always been your friend, and will continue to be so, if you 
are in your duty. 

February 24, 1815. 
Dear Son: — 

I expect you are now engaged in rej)ealing many of those laws which 
have been enacted for prosecuting the war with vigor. As the olive- 
branch has been presented to us, it will change all our plans, and we will 
again be permitted to return in peace to our different occupations, and 
ought to thank heaven for the blessing. This night we are to illuminate 
this place in consequence of peace. Those who have seen the treaty say it 
is dishonorable to America ; that there are none of those points gained for 
which we declared war. 



12 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

June 23, 1815. 

You appear to hesitate about going to the Legislature again, 

and lam both unable and unwilling to advise you on that point; but as 
it appears your business has not decreased by being there last winter, 
I would have no objection to your going another session, as it would 
aflbrd you another opportunity of improvement, and perhaps the i3eoi)le 
of your district may some time elect you to Congress. Could you not get 
an active young man as a student that could l^eep your office open in your 
absence, and do a little business for you ? 

You may expect to have many difficulties and dangers to encounter in 
your passage through life, especially as your situation becomes enviable ; 
but I hope you will always depend upon the protection of that kind Prov- 
idence, who has dealt so kindly with you, to shield you from the shafts of 
malicious enemies. 

Your mother and the family send their kind love to you, and believe 
me your loving father, 

J. B. 

The next event in his life of which I find any mention in 
his autobiography, was the delivery of an oration before the 
Washington Society of Lancaster, July 4, 1815, of which he 
speaks as follows : 

On the 4th of July, 1815, I delivered the oration before the Washington 
Association of Lancaster, which has been the subject of much criticism. 
There are many sentiments in this oration which I regret ; at the same 
time it cannot be denied that the country was wholly unprepared for war, 
at the period of its declaration, and the attempt to carry it on by means 
of loans, without any resort to taxation, had well nigh made the Govern- 
ment bankrupt. There is, however, a vein of feeling running throughout 
the whole oration— of which, as I look back to it, I may be excused for 
being proud — which always distinijuishes between the conduct of the ad- 
ministration and the necessity for tlefending the country. Besides, it will 
be recollected that this oration was not delivered until after the close of 
the war. I said : "Glorious it has been, in the highest degree, to the Amer- 
ican character, but disgraceful in the extreme to the administration. 
When the individual States discovered that they were abandoned by the 
General Government, whose duty it was to protect them, the fortitude of 
their citizens arose with their misfortunes. The moment we were invaded, 
the genius of freedom inspired their souls. They rushed upon their ene- 
mies with a hallowed fury which the hireling soldiers of Britain could 
never feel. They taught our foe that the soil of freedom would always be 
the grave of its invaders." 

I spoke with pride and exultation of the exploits of the navy, and also 
of the regular army during the last year of the war. The former "has 



EARLY DISTINCTIOX. 13 

risen triumphant above its enemies at home, and has made the proud mis- 
tress of the ocean tremble. The people are now convinced that a navy is 
their best defence." * 

In the conclusion there is a passage concerning foreign influence which 
must be approved by all. " Foreign influence has been, in every age, the 
curse of Republics. Her jaundiced eye sees all things in false colors. The 
thick atmosphere of prejudice, by which she is forever surrounded, ex- 
cludes from her sight the light of reason • whilst she worships the nations 
which she favors for their very crimes, she curses the enemies of that 
nation even their virtues. In every age she has marched before tlie ene- 
mies of her country, ' proclaiming peace, when there was no peace,' and 
lulling its defenders into fatal security, whilst the iron hand of despotism 
has been aiming a death-blow at their liberties." And again, " We are 
separated from the nations of Europe by an immense ocean. We are still 
more disconnected from them by a difi"erent form of government, and by 
the enjoyment of true liberty. Why, then, should we injure ourselves by 
taking part in the ambitious contests of foreign despots and kings ? " 

[from niS FATHEK.] 

July 14, 1815. 

No doubt you will have many political enemies to criticise your oration, 
but you must take the consequences now. It is a strong mark of appro- 
bation to have so many copies of it published. I hope to see one of them. 

I am busily engaged with my harvest. I am veiy glad I did not pur- 
chase goods as I proposed, as they have fallen greatly in price. 

September 1, 1815. 

Myself and the ftimily are very anxioua to see you, yet I am 

glad that your business is so good that you cannot, with propriety, leave 
it, yet you must always make your calculations to come as often as you 
can. Have you agreed to your nomination for the Legislature another 
session ? You know your own situation best. If you think proper to 
take another seat, it has my approbation. I have read your oration, and 
I think it well done. Perhaps it is a little too severe, and may hurt the 
feelings of some of your friends, who have been friendly, independent of 
politics. I have lent it to a few people who have asked for it, and they 
all speak well of your performance. 
♦ 

* " There is extant, according to the best of my recollection in the National Intelligencer, 
though not in Everett's edition of his works, a speech of Mr. Webster in 1814, in the House 
of Representatives, on the 'Conduct of the War.' It is vei7 severe on the military opera- 
tions, especially in Canada (which no doubt, as a general thing, deserved all that was said of 
them), but he dwells with pride on our naval exploits. 'However.' says he, 'we may 
dift'er as to what has been done or attempted on land, our differences cease at the water's 
edge." " (Note by Mr. Buchanan.) 



14 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Oct. 19, 1815. 

It appears from the Lancaster Journal, you are again elected. 

I wish you may end the next session with the same popularity as a states- 
man that you gained in the last session. 

Mr. Buchanan's own account of his second term of service in 
the Legislature is thus given : 

I was again elected a member of the House of Representatives in the 
State Legislature in October, 1815. The currency at that period was in 
great disorder throughout the Middle, Western, and Southern States, in 
consequence of the suspension of specie payments occasioned by the war. 
On the 20th of December, 1815, a resolution was adopted by the House of 
Representatives, instructing the Committee on Banks, " to inquire into the 
causes of the suspension of specie payments by the banks within this Com- 
monwealth ; and also, whether any or what measures ought to be adopted 
by the Legislature on this subject." This committee was composed of Mr. 
McEuen. of the city ; IVIilliken, of Mifflin ; Stewart, of Fayette ; and Dysart, 
of Crawford. On the 13th of January, 1816, Mr. McEuen made a report 
which concluded with a recommendation that a law should be passed, 
obliging the banks to pay interest on balances to each other monthly, at 
the rate of six per cent, per annum, after the 1st of March ; also, obliging 
the banks refusing to pay specie for their notes after the 1st of January, 
1817, to pay interest at the rate of eighteen per cent, per annum from the 
time of demand; and forfeiting the charters of such banks as should refuse 
to redeem their notes in specie after the 1st of January, 1818. A bare 
majority of the committee had concurred in the report. The minority had 
requested me to prepare a substitute for it, and offer it as soon as the re- 
port was read. This substitute concluded with a resolution, " that it is 
inexpedient at this time for the Legislature to adopt any compulsory 
measures relative to the banks." The original report and the substitute 
were postponed, and no action was ever had afterwards upon either. 

The substitute states the following to have been the causes of the sus- 
pension of specie payments in Pennsylvania : 

1. The blockade by the enemy of the Middle and Southern seaports, 
the impossibility of getting their productions to market, and the conse- 
quent necessity imposed upon them to pay in specie to New England the 
price of the foreign merchandise imported into that ^Dortion of the Union. 

2. The large loans made by banks and individuals of this and the adja- 
cent States to the Government to sustain the war, and the small compara- 
tive loans made in New England, which were paid by an extravagant 
issue of bank notes. These latter bore but a small proportion to the 
money expended there. To make up this deficiency, the specie of the 
Middle and Southern States was drawn from the vaults of these banks, 



PROFESSIONAL INCOME. 15 

and was ussd by the New England people in commerce, or smuggled to 
the enemy. 

3. The great demand for specie in England. 

4. The recent establishment of a number of new banks throughout the 
interior of Pennsylvania, which drew their capital chiefly from the banks 
in Philadelphia and thereby weakened them, compelled them first to sus- 
pend specie payments. These new banks, in self-defence, were therefore 
obliged to suspend. 

5. The immense importation of foreign goods at the close of the war, 
and the necessity of paying for them in specie, have continued the suspen- 
sion. 

During this session, and whilst the debates on the subject were pro- 
ceeding in Congress, I changed my imjiression on the subject of a Bank of 
the United States, and became decidedly hostile to such an institution. In 
this opinion I have never since wavered, and although I have invested 
much of the profits of my profession in stocks, and was often advised by 
friends to buy stock in this bank, I always declined becoming a stock- 
holder. Whilst the bill was pending in Congress, I urged Mr. Holgate 
and other influential Democrats in the House to offer instructions against 
the measure, but could not prevail with them. I recollect Mr. II. told me 
that it was unnecessary, as our Democratic Senators in Congress would 
certainly vote against the measure without any instructions. 

Mr. Buchanan appears to have left the Legislature at the end 
of the session of 1815-lG, with a fixed determination to devote 
himself exclusively to the practice of his profession. He says : 

After my second session in the Legislature, I applied myself with unre- 
mitting application to the practice of the law. My practice in Lancaster 
and some of the adjoining counties was extensive, laborious, and lucrative. 
It increased rajjidly in value from the time I ceased to be a member of the 
Legislature. During the year ending on the 1st of April, 1819, I received 
in cash for professional services $7,915.92, which was, down to that time, 
the best year I ever experienced.* 



* I find a memorandum in Mr. Buchanan's handwriting of his professional emoluments 
during his years of active practice. 



1813 $938 

1814 $1,096 

1815 $2,246 

1816 $3,174 

1817 $5,379 

1818 $7,915 

1819 $7,092 

1820 $5,665 



1821-2 $11,297 

1823... $7,243 

1825 $4,521 

1826 $3,419 

1827 $2,570 

1828 $2,003 

1829 .. $3,362 



16 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Among liis professional employments at this period, I find 
the following modest allusion to a cause in which he gained 
great distinction : 

During the session of the Legislature of 1816-17 I aloue defended the 
Hon. Walter Franklin and his associates on articles of impeachment 
against them before the Senate; and during the session of 1817-18, I de- 
fended the same judges on other articles, and had for associates Mr. Condy 
and Mr. Hopkins. I never felt the responsibility of my position more 
sensibly than, when a young man between 25 and 26 years of age, I under- 
took alone to defend Judge Franklin ; and although he was anxious I 
should, again the next year, undertake his cause without assistance, yet 
I insisted upon the employment of older and more experienced counsel. 

As the impeachment case referred to in the close of this 
sketch was the occasion of Mr. Buchanan's early distinction 
at the bar, a brief account of it may be here given. It was 
a prosecution instituted from political motives, and was a 
lamentable exhibition of party asperity. Judge Franklin was 
the president judge of the court of common pleas for a judi- 
cial district composed of the counties of Lancaster, Lebanon, 
and York. His associates were not lawyers. At a period 
of great political excitement, which had continued since the 
close of the war with Great Britain, there arose a litigation 
in Judge Franklin's court which grew out of one of the occur- 
rences of the war. In July, 1814, the President had made a 
requisition on the Governor of Pennsylvania for the services of 
certain regiments of militia. The troops were called and inus- 
tered into the Federal service. Houston, a citizen of Lancaster, 
refused to serve ; he was tried by a court-martial, held under 
the authority of the State, convicted, and sentenced to pay a 
fine. For this he brought an action in the common pleas 
against the members of the court-martial and its olficer who 
had collected the fine. On the trial, Judge Franklin ruled 
that when the militia had been mustered into the service of the 
United States, the control of the State and its power to punish 
were ended. The plaintifif, therefore, recovered a verdict. 
Judge Franklin was subjected to this impeachment for ruling a 
point of law on Avhich the Judges of the Siipreme Court of the 
United States afterwards differed. 



EARLY DISTINCTION. I7 

In a diarj kept by a gentleman who watched this impeach- 
ment with the deepest interest, I find the following allusion to 
Mr. Buchanan's argument : 

" This argument was conducted with great ingenuity, eloquence, and 
address. It made a deep impression. It will tend very much to raise and 
extend the reijutation of Mr. Buchanan, and will have, I hope, a favorable 
effect upon his future prospects as a lawyer and a politician. 

The impression produced by Mr. Buchanan's argument was so 
strong, that the managers of the impeachment asked for an 
adjournment before they replied to it. His defence was made 
upon the sound doctrine that " impeachment " of a judge for a 
legal opinion, when no crime or misdemeanor has been com- 
mitted, is a constitutional solecism. The respondent was ac- 
quitted, and his advocate acquired a great amount of reputation 
for so young a man. 

Witli an honorable and distinguished professional career thus 
opening before him, a favorite in society both from his talents 
and his character, young, high-spirited and full of energy, it 
seemed that happiness had been provided for him by his own 
merits and a kind Providence. But there now occurred an 
episode in his life which cast upon him a never-ending sorrow. 
He became engaged to be married to a young lady in Lancaster, 
who has been described to me, by persons who knew her, as a 
very beautiful girl, of singularly attractive and gentle disposi- 
tion, but retiring and sensitive. Her father, Eobert Coleman, 
Esq., a wealthy citizen of Lancaster, entirely approved of the 
engagement. After this connection had existed for some time, 
she suddenly wrote a note to her lover and asked him to release 
her from the engagement. There is no reason to believe that 
their mutual feelings had in any degree changed. lie could 
only reply that if it was her wish to put an end to their engage- 
ment, he must submit. This occurred in the latter part of the 
summer of 1819. The young lady died very suddenly, while 
on a visit to Philadelphia, on the 9tli of the December following, 
in the twenty-third year of her age. Her remains were brought 
to her father's house in Lancaster, on the next Saturday,, just 
one week from the day on which she left home. " The funeral," 
says the diary already quoted from, " took place the next day, 
'l.— 2 



18 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

and was attended by a great number of the inhabitants, who 
appeared to feel a deep sympathy with the family on this dis- 
tressing occasion." 

From the same source, I transcribe a little obituary notice, 
which was published in a Lancaster paper on the 11th of 
December, and which the diary states was written by Mr. 
Buchanan : 

"Departed this life, on Thursday morning hist, in the twenty-third year 
of her age, while on a visit to her friends in the city of Philadelphia, Miss 
Anne C. Coleman, daughter of Robert Coleman, Esquire, of this city. It 
rarely falls to our lot to shed a tear over the mortal remains of one so 
much and so deservedly beloved as was the deceased. She was everything 
which the fondest parent or fondest friend could have wished her to be. 
Although she was young and beautiful, and accomiDlished, and the smiles 
of fortune shone ujjon her, yet her native modesty and worth made her 
unconscious of her own attractions. Her heart was the seat of all the softer 
virtues which ennoble and dignify the character of woman. She has now 
gone to a world where in the bosom of her God she will be happy with 
congenial spirits. May the memory of her virtues be ever green in the 
hearts of her surviving friends. May her mild spirit, which on earth still 
breathes peace and good-will, be their guardian angel to preserve them 
from the faults to which she was ever a stranger — 

" ' The spider's most attenuated thread 
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie 
On earthly bliss— it breaks at every breeze.' " 

The following letter, written by Mr. Buchanan to the father 
of the young lady, is all that remains of written evidence, to 
attest the depth of his attachment to her : 

[jAMES BUCHANAN TO ROBERT COLEMAN, ESQ.] 

Lancasteb, December 10, 1819. 
My dear Sir : 

You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly 
object of my affections, without whom life now presents to me a dreary 
blank. My prospects are all cut off, and I feel that my happiness will be 
buried with her in the grave. It is now no time for explanation, but the 
time will come when you will discover that she, as well as I, have been 
much abused. God forgive the authors of it. My feelings of resentment 
against them, whoever they may be, are buried in the dust. I have now 
one request to make, and, for the love of God and of your dear, departed 



DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE. 19 

daughter whom I loved infinitely more than any other human being could 
love, deny me not. AflEbrd me the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body 
before its interment. I would not for the world be denied this request. 

I mio-ht make another, but, from the misrepresentations which must 
have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to follow her 
remains to the grave as a mourner. I would like to convince the world, 
and I hope yet to convince you, that she was infinitely dearer to me than 
life. I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that happiness has 
fled from me forever. The prayer which I make to God without ceasing 
is, that I yet may be able to show my veneration for the memory of my 
dear departed saint, by my respect and attachment for her surviving 
friends. 

May Heaven bless you, and enable you to bear the shock with the forti- 
tude of a Christian. 

I am, forever, your sincere and grateful friend, 

James BucnAN.iN. 

There is among Mr. Buchanan's papers a letter written to 
him by one of his friends, shortly after the death of Miss Cole- 
man, which shows how this affliction immediately affected him, 
and how it was regarded by persons of high social standing in 
Pennsylv-ania, who were not prejudiced by erroneous beliefs in 
regard to the circumstances which led to the breaking of the 
engagement. 

[^MklOS ELLMAKER TO MR. BUCnAJSTAN.] 

December 30, 1819. 
Dear Sir: — 

I hear you have left Lancaster, and have not heard where you have 
gone to; but I take it for granted the absence will be short. I am writing, 
I know not why, and perhaps had better not. I write only to speak of the 
awful visitation of Providence that has fallen upon you, and how deeply 
I feel it. The thought of your situation has scarcely been absent from my 
mind ten days. I trust your restoration to your philosophy and courage, 
and to the elasticity of spirits natural to most young men. Yet time, the 
sovereign cnre of all these, must intervene before much good can be done.' 
The sun will shine again — though a man enveloped in gloom always thinks 
the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember the Spanish anecdote ? 
A lady, who had lost a favorite child, remained for months sunk in sullen 
sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one morning, visited her, and found 
her, as usual, immersed in gloom and grief. "What!" says he; "have 
you not forgiven God Almighty ? " She rose, exerted herself, joined the 
world again, and became useful to herself and friends. 



20 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Might I venture to hint advice ? It would be to give full scope (con- 
trary to common advice on similar occasions), I say to give full vent and 
unrestrained license to the feelings and thoughts natural in the case for a 
time — which time may be a week, two weeks, three weeks, as nature dic- 
tates — without scarcely a small effort during that time to rise above the 
misfortune; then, when this time is past, to rouse, to banish depressing 
thoughts, as far as possible, and engage most industriously in business. 
My oi^iuion is that too early an effort to shake off a very heavy affliction 
is often, if not always, dangerous. An early effort is futile, and worse 
— an unavailing struggle renders the mind cowardly, and sinks the 
spirits deeper in gloom. The true way to conquer is to run away at 
first. The storm which uproots the firmest oak passes harmlessly over the 
willow. 

Forgive all this talk ; it opens in my own bosom a wound which a dozen 
years have not cicatrized, and brings to my recollection a dark period of 
my own days, the remembrance of which yet chills me with horror. 

Two of your cases here may be tried. If they are, I will endeavor to 
assist your colleague, Mr. Elder, for you, and for your benefit. This is our 
court week for the civil list 

]VIrs. E talks much of you, and if she knew I was writing, would 

have me add her kindest message— indicative of the interest she feels. 
Farewell. 

Amos Ellmaker. 



In the course of Mr. Buclianan's long subsequent political 
career, this incident in his early life was often alhided to in 
partisan newspapers, and in that species of literature called 
" campaign documents," accompanied by many perversions and 
misrepresentations. These publications are each and all un- 
worthy of notice. On one occasion, after he had retired to 
Wheatland, and when he had passed the age of seventy, he was 
shown by a friend a newspaper article, misrepresenting, as 
nsual, the details of this affair. He then said, with deep emo- 
tion, that there were papers and relics which lie had religiously 
preserved, then in a sealed package in a place of deposit in the 
city of New York, which would explain the trivial origin of 
this separation.* His executors found these papers inclosed and 
sealed separately from all others, and with a direction upon 

* These and other papers of importance were sent by Mr. Buchanan from Wheatland to 
a hank in New York during the Civil War, when Pennsylvania was threatened with an inva- 
eioa by the Confederate troops. 



DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE. 21 

tliein in his liandwriting, tliat they were to be destroj'ed with- 
out being read. They obeyed the injunction, and burnt the 
package without breaking the seal. It happened, however, that 
the original of the letter addressed by Mr. Buchanan to the 
young lady's father, before her funeral, -was not contained in 
this package. It was found in his private depositaries at 
AVheatland ; and it came there in consequence of the fact that 
it was returned by the father unread and unopened. 

It is now known that the separation of the lovers originated 
in a misunderstanding, on the part of the lady, of a very small 
matter, exaggerated by giddy and indiscreet tongues, working 
on a peculiarly sensitive nature. Such a separation, the com- 
monest of occuiTences, would have ended, in the ordinary 
course, in reconciliation, when the parties met, if death had not 
suddenly snatched away one of the sufferers, and left the other 
to a life-long grief. But under the circumstances, I feel bound 
to be governed by the spirit of Mr. Buchanan's written instruc- 
tion to his executors, and not to go into the details of a story 
which show that the whole occurrence was chargeable on the 
folly of others, and not on either of the two whose interests 
were involved. 

Among the few survivors of the circle to which this young 
3ady belonged, the remembrance of her sudden death is still 
fresh in aged hearts. The estrangement of the lovers was but 
one of those common occurrences that are perpetually verifying 
the saying, hackneyed by everlasting repetition, that "the 
course of true love never did run smooth." 

But it ran, in this case, pure and unbroken in the heart of 
the survivor, through a long and varied life. It became a grief 
that could not be spoken of; to which only the most distant 
allusion could be made ; a sacred, unceasing sorrow, buried 
deep in the breast of a man who was formed for domestic joys ; 
hidden beneath manners that were most engaging, beneath 
strong social tendencies, and a chivalrous old-fashioned deference 
to women of all ages and all claims. His peculiar and reveren- 
tial demeanor towards the sex, never varied by rank, or station, 
or individual attractions, was doubtless in a large degree caused 
by the tender memory of what he had found, or fancied, in her 
whom he had lost in his early days by such a cruel fate. If her 



22 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

death had not prevented their marriage, it is probable that a 
purely professional and domestic life would have filled up the 
measure alike of his happiness and his ambition. It is certain 
that this occurrence prevented him from ever marrying, and 
impelled him again into public life, after he had once resolved 
to quit it. Soon after this catastrophe, he was ofiered a nomi- 
nation to a seat in Congress. He did not suppose that he could 
be elected, and did not much desire to be. But he was strongly 
urged to accept the candidacy, and finally consented, chiefly 
because he needed an innocent excitement that would some- 
times distract him from the grief that was destined never to 
leave him.* Great and uninterrupted, however, as was his polit- 
ical and social success, he lived and died a widowed and a 
childless man. Fortunately for him, a sister's child, left an 
oi-phan at an early age, whom he educated with the wisest care, 
filled to him the place of a daughter as nearly and tenderly as 
such a relative could supply that want, adorning with womanly 
accomplishments and virtues the high public stations to which 
he was eventually called. 

* Conversing once in London with an intimate friend, very much younger than him- 
self (Mr. S. L. M. Barlow of New York), Mr. Buchanan paid : " I never intended to engage in 
politics, but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my prospects and plans were all 
changed by a most sad event which happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As 
a diiiitraction from my groat grief, and because I saw that through a political following I 
could secure the frienda I then ueodod, I accepted a uominatiou." 



CHAPTEK II. 

1820— 1824. 

Monroe's administration — eminent men in congress — notices of 
william lowndes and john randolph of roanoke — john sar- 

GEANT — BUCHANAN BECOMES A LEADING DEBATER — BANKRUPT BILL 
— CUMBERLAND ROAD — THE TARIFF. 

IN the autumn of 1820, Mr. Buchanan was elected a Hepre- 
sentativc in Congress for a district composed of the counties 
of Lancaster, York, and Dauphin. He was nominated and 
elected as a Federalist. He took his seat on the 3d of Decem- 
ber, 1821. 

Of course a young man of nine-and-twenty, who liad been 
for two terms a member of the Legislature of his native State, 
and had been somewhat active in that body, was already pos- 
sessed of some powers as a debater. But his political principles, 
as a national statesman, were yet to be formed. The " Federal- 
ism " of the period in which Mr. Buchanan came into public 
life, and which was professed by those among whom he grew 
up, chiefly consisted in an opposition to the war of 1812 and to 
some of the measures of the Administration which conducted 
it. In the five years which followed the peace of 1815, the 
sharper lines which had separated the Federal and the Eepub- 
hcan (or Democratic) parties, and their distinctive organiza- 
tions, almost disappeared. Mr. Monroe, who succeeded Mr. 
Madison, was elected President, for the term commencing March 
4, 1817, by a majority of 109 out of 217 electoral votes. At his 
second election, for the term commencing March 4, 1821, his 
majority was 118 out of 235. This near approach to unanimity 
evinces almost an obliteration of party distinctions. Mr. Mon- 
roe's personal popularity and the general confidence that was 
reposed in him had a considerable influence in producing what 



24 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

was called " the era of good feeling." which prevailed while he 
administered the government. The Federalists, who had been 
strongest in the North and the East, were conciliated bj his 
tirst Inaugural, while his strength was not weakened among 
the Republicans (or Democrats) of the South. In truth, it was 
not until the war was over and some of the animosities which 
it caused had begun to fade, that the attention of men began to 
be directed to questions of internal administration, which would 
involve an exploration of the Federal powers and a discussion 
of policies applicable to a state of peace. 

When Mr. Buchanan entered Congress there was no section- 
alism to disturb the repose of the country. The Cabinet was a 
fair representation of the different sections, its members being 
from Massachusetts, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, 
and Maryland. It remained the same, with one exception only, 
until Mr. Monroe went out of office in 1824.'" It is not easy to 
trace among the public men of this period any fixed political 
doctrines such as afterwards came to distinguish the opposing 
parties. All that can be said is, that in the Middle States those 
who had been Republicans had a strong tendency to the Virginia 
principles of State Rights ; but what these were, beyond a gen- 
eral tendency to watch and prevent undue expansion of the 
Federal powers, it would be difficult now to say. In Congress, 
most of the Eastern representatives were Free Traders, while 
those of the Middle States were in favor of moderate protection. 
Among the Southern members there was a disposition to follow 
a liberal policy in the administration of the government, which 
was aided by the ability and ambition of Mr. Calhoun, the 
Secretary of War. But among the members, chiefly confined to 
the Southwestern States, there was a compact knot of men who 
were called " Radicals," in the political nomenclature of that 
period. It is hard to define them, but their distinctive policy 
appears to have been a steady resistance to all expenditures of 
public money, and a persistently strict construction of the Con- 
stitution. Thus there cannot be said to have been any well- 
defined parties at this period, such as the country has since been 



* Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Na\y, was appointed to the Bench of the Supreme 
Court in December, 1S23, and Mr. Southard, of New Jersey, took his place. 



MONROE'S ADMINISTRATION. 25 

accustomed to. But they began to be formed on the questions 
relating to finance and the development of the internal resources 
of the country, which arose during Mr. Monroe's Presidency, 
and continued to a later period. Men who had been Federalists 
and men who had been Republicans, during the previous admin- 
istrations, passed into the one or the other of the subsequent 
parties, which assumed new designations, without much real 
historical connection with the old parties that had preceded 
them. 

The personal composition of the two Houses of Congress at 
this time presents many interesting names. In the Senate, 
Rufus King, who had been a Senator during Washington's 
Administration, and Nathaniel Macon, who had been a Repre- 
sentative at the same time, gave a flavor of the formative period 
of the Republic. John Galliard and William Smith (of South 
Carolina) and James Brown (of Louisiana) were also among the 
older members. A somewhat younger class of men numbered 
among tliem Martin Van Buren, who succeeded General Jack- 
son as President. 

Mr. Buchanan always considered it one of the great advan- 
tages of his life that he had the benefit, at this early period, of 
the society of Mr. King and Mr. IVFacon, and he always spoke in 
the most grateful terms of their personal kindness to him. The 
members of the House of Representatives, with one exception, 
General Smitli of Maryland, were younger men. They are 
spoken of in the following paper, A\'liich I find in Mr. Buchanan's 
handwriting, and in which he has recorded his impressions of 
that beau-ideal of a statesman, William Lowndes, of South 
Carolina, by whose early death, in 1822, the country lost one 
of the ablest, most accomplished and purest men it has ever 
produced : * 

"I entered the House of Representatives with George McDuffie and Joel 
E. Poinsett of South Carolina, Andrew Stevenson of Virginia, John Tod of 
Pennsylvania, John Nelson of Maryland, Reuben H. Walworth and Churchill 
C. Cambreleng of New York, and Benjamin G-orham of Massachusetts. They 
were all able and promising men, having already attained high distinction in 
their respective States. 

* Those notes were written by Mr. Buchanan in 18G7. 



26 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

" Among those who had served in former Congresses, Mr. Wilh'am Lowndes 
of South Carolina was the foremost in ability and influence. Next to him 
stood Mr. Sergeant of Pennsylvania, Mr. McLane of Delaware, Mr. Philip P. 
Barbour of Virginia, Mr. Baldwin of Pennsylvania, Mr. Tracy of New York, 
and John Eandolph of Eoanoke. Neither Mr. Clay nor Mr. Webster was a 
member of Congress at this period, Mr. Lowndes did not take his seat until 
December 21st, nearly three weeks after the beginning of the session. In 
the meantime, the new members of the House awaited his arrival in Wash- 
ington with much interest. He, with Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Cheves, had con- 
stituted what was termed the ' Galaxy ' of young men whom South Carolina 
sent to the House to sustain the war of 1812 with Great Britain, and he 
ranked the first among them. 

"Mr. Lowndes had been unanimously nominated in December, 1821, by 
the Legislature of South Carolina, as a candidate for the Presidency to suc- 
ceed Mr. Monroe. To this he made no direct response. In a letter to a 
friend in Charleston, after stating that he had not taken and never would 
take a step to draw the public eye upon him for this high place, he uttered 
the memorable sentiment : ' The Presidency of the United States is not, in 
my opinion, an office to be either solicited or declined.' And such was the 
general conviction of his candor and sincerity that no man doubted this to be 
the genuine sentiment of his heart. Fortunate would it have been for the 
country had all future aspirants for this exalted station acted in accordance 
with this noble sentiment. At the time, as Mr. Benton truly observes, 'he 
was strongly indicated for an early elevation to the Presidency — indicated by 
the public will and judgment, and not by an}'^ machinery of individual or party 
management, from the approach of which he shrank as from the touch of 
contamination.' * 

" When Mr. Lowndes took his seat in the House, it was apparent to all 
that his frail and diseased frame betokened an early death, though he was 
then only in the forty-first year of his age. He was considerably above six 
feet in height, and was much stooped in person. There was nothing striking 
in his countenance to indicate great and varied intellectual powers. As a 
speaker he was persuasive and convincing. Though earnest and decided in 
the discussion of great questions, he never uttered a word which could give 
personal offence to his opponents or leave a sting behind. His eloquence 
partook of his own gentle and unpretending nature. His voice had become 
feeble and husky, and when he rose to speak, the members of the House, 
without distinction of party, clustered around him so that they might hear 
every word which fell from his lips. Towards his antagonists he was the 
fairest debater ever known in Congress. It was his custom to state their 
arguments so strongly and clearly that John Randolph, on one occasion, 
exclaimed: 'He will never be able to answer himself.' He possessed all the 
varied information necessary to the character of a great American statesman ; 

* Benton's Thirty Years in the Senate, Vol. I, p. 19. 



EMINENT MEN IN CONGRESS. 27 

and this, not merely in regard to general principles, but to minute practical 
details. 

" On one occasion it became his duty, as Chairman of the Committee on 
Commerce, in the House, to present a history of the origin, progress and 
character of our trade with the East Indies. This he did with such fulness 
and precision that Mr. Silsbee, a well-informed and much-respected member 
of the House, and afterwards a Senator from Massachusetts, declared in his 
place, that although he had been engaged in that trade for many years, the 
gentleman from South Carolina had communicated to the House important 
information and shed new hght on the subject which had never been known 
to him. On another occasion, two young members made a wager that Mr. 
Lowndes could not promptly state the process of manufacturing a common 
pin. On propounding the question to him, he at once stated the whole 
process in minute detail. 

" Mr, Lowndes' great influence, — for he was the undisputed leader in the 
House — arose in no small degree from the conviction of its members that he 
never had a sinister or selfish purpose in view, but always uttered the gen- 
uine sentiments of his heart. Mr. Lowndes had not the least jealousy in his 
nature. In his social intercourse with his fellow-members he was ever ready 
and willing to impart his stores ot information on any subject, without feeling 
the least apprehension that these might be used to anticipate what he himself 
intended to say, or in debate against himself. His health continuing to 
decline, he resigned his seat in the House, and by the advice of his physicians, 
embarked in October, 1822, from Philadelphia in the ship Moss, with his wife 
and daughter, for London. He died on the passage, on the 27th of that 
month, and was buried at sea. 

"His death was announced in the House of Representatives on the 21st 
of January, 1823, by Mr. James Hamilton, his successor. This was the first 
occasion on which such honors had been paid to the memory of any one not 
a member of the House at the time of his decease. Among the eulogies pro- 
nounced was one by John W, Taylor, of New York, who had been the 
Speaker of the House during the session immediately preceding. He had 
been an active and able opponent of Mr. Lowndes throughout the debates 
and proceedings on the Missouri question, which had for two years convulsed 
the House and the country, until its settlement at the close of the last session. 
Coming from a political antagonist, it so graphically presents the true charac- 
ter of Mr. Lowndes, that I am tempted to copy a portion of it. After refer- 
ring to his death, as ' the greatest misfortune which had befallen the Union ' 
since he had held a seat in its councils, he proceeds : ' The highest and best 
hopes of this country looked to William Lowndes for their fulfillment. The 
most honorable office in the civilized world— the Chief Magistracy of this free 
people — would have been illustrated by his virtues and talents. During nine 
years' service in this House, it Avas my happiness to be associated with him 
on many of its most important committees. He never failed to shed new 
light on all subjects to which he applied his vigorous and discriminating mind 



28 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

His industry in discharging the arduous and responsible duties constantly- 
assigned him, was persevering and efficient. To manners the most unas- 
sumino-, to patriotism the most disinterested, to morals the most pure, to 
attainments of the first rank in literature and science, he added the virtues of 
decision and prudence, so happily combined, so harmoniously united, that we 
knew not which most to admire, the firmness with which he pursued his pur- 
pose or the gentleness with which he disarmed opposition. His arguments 
were made not to enjoy the triumph of victory, but to convince the judg- 
ment of his hearers ; and when the success of his efforts was most signal, 
his humility was most conspicuous. You, Mr. Speaker, will remember his 
zeal in sustaining the cause of our country in the darkest days of the late 
war.' 

" The whole House, with one accord, responded to the truthfulness of 
these sentiments so happily expressed by Mr. Taylor. And yet, strange to 
say, the published debates of Congress contain but a meagre and imperfect 
sketch, and offer no report at all of the speeches of this great and good man. 
His fame as a parliamentary speaker, like that of the great commoner, Charles 
James Fox, must mainly rest upon tradition now fast fading away. The 
editors of the National Intelligencer truly remark that, 'of all the distin- 
guished men who have passed periods of their lives in either House of Con- 
gress, there is certainly no one of anything like equal ability who has left 
fewer traces on the page of history or on the records of Congress than Wil- 
liam Lowndes, the eminent Representative in Congress for several years of 
the State of South Carolina.' The reason which they assign why so few of 
his eloquent speeches are to be found on record is attributable, in part, to his 
unfeigned diffidence, which placed less than their true value upon his own 
exertions, and in part to an objection which he had, on principle, to the prac- 
tice of writing out speeches for publication, either before or after the delivery. 
Little or no reliance could be placed on the reporters of that day. The' art 
even of shorthand writing was almost unknown in this country, and the pub- 
lished sketches prepared by the so-called reporters, were calculated to injure 
rather than to elevate the character of the speaker. 

" How much has been lost to the country by the scruples of Mr. Lowndes 
may be imagined from the 'little gem' of a speech written out by him at the 
personal request of Mr. Silsbee, then a member of the House, on the bill for 
the relief of the family of Commodore Perry, but never published until more 
than twenty years after his death. It does not appear in the annals of 1821 
that he made any speech on this occasion. It may be added, to show the 
incapacity of the reporters of that day, that there is no other mention of his 
speech against the bankrupt bill, commenced on February 21st, and con- 
cluded on March 5th, 1822, though listened to with rapt attention by the 
House, except that he did speak on these two days. From physical ex- 
haustion he was unable to say all he had intended on this important subject. 
His name does not even appear in the index as a speaker on this bill. 

" I have written much more than I should otherwise have done, to repair 



EMINENT MEN IN CONGRESS. 29 

injustice done to the character of the ablest, purest, and most unselfish states- 
man of his day," * 

Of John Eandolpli and John Sergeant, Mr. Buchanan thus 
records his recollections : 

John Randolph of Roanoke was the most conspicuous, though far from the 
most influential member of the House, when I first took my seat. He en- 
tered the House in 1799, and had continued there, with the exception of two 
terms, from that early period. His style of debate was in perfect contrast to 
that of Mr. Lowndes. He was severe and sarcastic, sparing neither friend 
nor foe, when the one or the other laid himself open to the shafts of his 
ridicule. He was a fine belles-lettres scholar, and his classical allusions were 
abundant and happy. He had a shrill and penetrating voice, and could be 
heard distinctly in every portion of the House. He spoke with great delib- 
eration, and often paused for an instant as if to select the most appropriate 
word. His manner was confident, proud, and imposing, and pointing, as he 
always did, his long forefinger at the object of attack, he gave peculiar em- 
phasis to the severity of his language. He attracted a crowded gallery when 
it was known he would address the House, and always commanded the 
undivided attention of his whole audience, whether he spoke the words of 
wisdom, or, as he often did, of folly. For these reasons he was more feared 
than beloved, and his influence in the House bore no proportion to the bril- 
liancy of his talents. He was powerful in pulling down an administration, but 
had no skill in building anything up. Hence he was almost always in the 
opposition, but was never what is called a business member. To me he was 
uniformly respectful, and sometimes complimentary in debate. I well remem- 
ber Mr. Sergeant putting me on my guard against Mr. Randolph's friendship." 

"Mr. Sergeant entered the House in December, 1815, and had continued 
to be a member since that day. As a lawyer, he stood in the front rank 
among the eminent members of the bar of Philadelphia, at a period when its 
members were greatly distinguished throughout the country for ability and 
learning. His personal character was above reproach. From his first ap- 
pearance he maintained a high rank in the estimation of the House. As a 
debater, he was clear and logical, and never failed to impart information. 
His fault was that of almost every member of Congress who had become a 

* In the debate on Chilton's Resohitions, in 1825, Mr. Ser2:eant said : 
"At the head of the Committee of Ways and Means in 1816, was one who could not be 
remembered without feelings of deep regret at the public loss occasioned by his early death. 
He possessed, in an uncommon degree, the confidence of this House, and he well deserved 
it. With so much accurate knowledge, and with powers which enabled him to delight and 
instruct the House, there was united so much gentleness and kindness, and such real, unaf- 
fected modesty, that you were prepared to be subdued before he exerted his commanding 
powers of argument. I mean William Lowndes of South CaroVma.."— Benton's Debates, Vol. 
IX, 730. 



30 



LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



member after a long aud successful training at the bar. He was too exhaustive 
in his arguments, touching every point in the question before the House without 
discriminating between those which were vital and those which were sub- 
ordinate. His manner was cold and didactic, and his prolixity sometimes 
fatio-ued the House. In his social intercourse with the members, he was cold 
but not repulsive. The high estimation in which he was held, arose from the 
just appreciation of his great abihties, and of his pure and spotless private 
character. There was nothing ad captandum about him. He was regarded 
by his constituents in Philadelphia with pride and affection, who generally 
spoke of him as ' our John Sergeant,' " 

The first debate in which Mr. Buchanan took part related to 
a bill, introduced by General Smith of Maryland, making- 
appropriations for the Military Establishment. This discussion, 
which took place on the 9th and 11th of January, 1822, was an 
excited one, from the inner motive of the opposition to the bill, 
which was aimed at the supposed aspirations of Mr. Calhoun, 
the Secretary of War. In reference to the Secretary Mr. 
Buchanan said : " I have no feeling of partiality for the Secre- 
tary of War, nor of prejudice against him. I view him merely 
as a public character, and, in that capacity, I conscientiously 
believe that he has done his duty." After a sharp reply from 
Mr. Kandolph, the bill was passed by a very large majority, the 
members of the so-called "Kadical" party alone voting against 
it. There very soon occurred another debate which is of greater 
importance, since it marks the direction which Mr. Buchanan's 
mind was beginning to take on the subject of Federal powers 
and State Eights. This was the occasion of the introduction 
of a Bankrupt bill. 

Prior to this time. Congress had but once exercised the con- 
stitutional power " to establish uniform laws on the subject of 
bankruptcies throughout the United States." This was in the 
Bankrupt law of 1800, which was repealed in 180-i. Of the 
power of Congress to legislate on the subject of " bankruptcy " 
there can of course be no doubt, since it is expressly conferred. 
But there has always been a doubt respecting the true construc- 
tion of the terms "bankruptcy" and "bankrupt." Following 
the English system, the Act of 1800 rejected the idea that these 
terms include all " insolvents," of all occupations, and confined 
the meaning to " traders," or mercantile insolvents. Here, 



BECOMES A LEADING DEBATER. 31 

tberefore, was one very serious question in interpretation to be 
encountered ; for altliougli the measure, of which some account 
is now to be given, contemplated, as it was first introduced, 
none but commercial insolvents, it finally turned upon an 
amendment which would have made it applicable to all classes 
of insolvent debtors. In either aspect, too, it brought into 
view the contrasted functions of the Federal and the State 
courts, in the enforcement and collection of private debts. 

The close of the war, in 1S15, was followed by extensive 
financial embarrassment among the commercial classes. The 
merchants of Philadelphia suff*ered severely during the five 
years which succeeded the peace, and it was by one of their 
Eepresentatives, Mr. John Sergeant, that a bankrupt bill, retro- 
spective as well as prospective in its operation, was introduced 
in the House, on the 11th of December, 1821. On the 22d of 
January, 1822, the debate was opened by Mr. Sergeant, as 
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Ilis speech was exceed- 
ingly able, and even pathetic, for he spoke for a large class of 
ruined men. The discussion continued until the 12th of March, 
Mr. Sergeant standing almost alone in advocacy of the bill, in 
opposition to George Tucker and Philip P. Barbour of Vir- 
ginia, and to Mr. Lowndes of South Carolina. The latter, 
although opposed to the bill, did not accord with the strict con- 
structionists of Virginia. Thus far, the proposed measure 
included only commercial insolvents. But on the 12th of 
March, a member from Kentucky offered an amendment that 
included all insolvent debtors, which was adopted. This, of 
course, changed the aspect of the whole subject, and whether 
so intended or not, finally defeated the bill. Mr. Buchanan 
spoke in opposition to the bill on the day the amendment was 
adopted. He did not question the power of Congress to pass a 
bankrupt law. ISTor did he contend that the "bankruptcy" 
referred to in the Constitution, necessarily included only com- 
mercial insolvents. But there is very perceptible in his speech 
on this occasion a tendency to that line of politics which he 
afterwards adopted and always adhered to, and which may be 
described as a forbearance from exercising Federal powers of 
acknowledged constitutional validity, in modes and npon occa- 
sions which may lead to an absorption of State jurisdictions. 



32 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Thus he said : " The bill, as it stood before the amendment, 
went far enough. It would, even then, have brought the oper- 
ation of the law and the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts into 
the bosom of every community. The bill as it now stands will 
entirely destroy the symmetry of our system, and make those 
courts the arbiters, in almost every case, of contracts to which 
any member of society who thinks proper to become a bankrupt 
may be a party. It will at once be, in a great degree, a judicial 
consolidation of the Union, This was never intended by the 

friends of the Constitution The jurisdiction of Federal 

Courts is now chiefly confined to controversies existing between 
the citizens of dilferent States. This bill, if it should become a 
law, will amount to a judicial consolidation of the Union." 

Of the general tenor of this sweeping measure, Mr. Buchanan 
said : 

"Let a bankrupt be presented to the view of society, who has become 
wealthy since his discharge, and who, after having ruined a number of his 
creditors, shields himself from the payment of his honest debts by his certifi- 
cate, and what effects would such a spectacle be calculated to produce ? Ex- 
amples of this nature must at length demoralize any people. The contagion 
introduced by the laws of the country would, for that very reason, spread 
like a pestilence, until honesty, honor, and faith will at length be swept from 
the intercourse of society. Leave the agricultural interest pure and uncor- 
rupted, and they will forever form the basis on which the Constitution and 
liberties of your country may safely repose. Do not, I beseech you, teach 
them to think lightly of the solemn obligation of contracts. No government 
on earth, however corrupt, has ever enacted a bankrupt law for farmers ; it 
would be a perfect monster in this country, where our institutions depend 
altogether upon the virtue of the people. We have no constitutional power 
to pass the amendment proposed by the gentleman from Kentucky; and if 
we had, we never should do so, because such a provision would spread a 
moral taint through society which would corrupt it to its very core." 

The next important discussion in which Mr. Buchanan took 
part was on a bill relating to the Cumberland Road. Before 
he entered Congress, a national turnpike had been built by the 
Federal Government, extending from Cumberland in the State 
of Maryland to Wheeling in the State of Virginia. It crossed 
a narrow part of Maryland, passed through a corner of Penn- 
sylvania, and touched but a small part of Virginia. The prin- 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 33 

cipal interest felt in tLis work was in tlie Western States. It 
encountered much opposition in Pennsylvania, where a turn- 
pike road had been built, under State authority, from Philadel- 
phia to Pittsburgh, which was kept in repair by tolls, and 
which paid a small dividend to its stockholders. A national 
road, supported by the Federal Government, and taking the 
travel from the Pennsylvania road was considered in that State 
as a grievance. Moreover, whenever the question of appro- 
priating money for the continued support of this national road, 
or the alternative of imposing tolls, arose in Congress, the 
question of constitutional power to establish such means of 
communication necessarily arose at every stage of the legisla- 
tion. That legislation is of interest now, inasmuch as the 
course taken by Mr. Buchanan illustrates the development of 
his opinions upon the constitutional question. 

Of the last appropriation for continuing the Cumberland 
Koad, there remained a balance in the Treasury of less than 
$10,000. In the General Appropriation Bill of this session 
(1822), provision was made for the repair of the road. A mem- 
ber from New Jersey moved to increase the amount. On this 
amendment there was an animated discussion, in which Mr. Bu- 
chanan appears to have considered that this public work was so 
beneficial to the general prosperity of the Union, that Congress 
might well appropriate the money needed for its support. " The 
truth is," he said, " we are all so connected together by our in- 
terests, as to place us in a state of mutual dependence upon each 
other, and to make that which is for the interest of any one 
member of the Federal family beneficial, in most instances, to all 
the rest. We never can be divided without first being guilty 
of political suicide. The prosperity of all the States depends £3 
much upon their Union, as human life depends upon that of 
the soul and body." It is quite obvious that this kind of 
reasoning was, however true in the general, too broad and 
sweeping to justify the appropriation of money from the Fed- 
eral Treasury for a public work which could claim no other 
than an incidental and remote relation to the prosperity of all 
the States. Every appropriation of money by Congress must 
rest upon some specific power of the Federal Constitution ; and 
although Congress has a specific power " to regulate commerce 

L— 3 



34. LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

among the several States," and while it may be admitted tliat 
commerce includes intercourse, it has been from the first, and 
still is, a serious question whether this grant of the power of 
commercial regulation includes a power to establish and maintain 
the means by which commerce is carried on, and by which 
intercourse may be facilitated, unless such means fall within the 
desio-nation of " post-roads," and are established, primarily at 
least, for the transmission of mails. The appropriation pro- 
posed for the continued support of the Cumberland Road failed, 
and then came the question, in a separate bill, of imposing tolls 
for the support of the road. Mr. Buchanan voted for this bill, 
as did most of his colleagues from Pennsylvania, and it passed 
both Houses. But on the 4th of May (1S22), the President, 
Mr. Monroe, returned the bill with a very long message, stating 
his objections to it. From this voluminous message, we may 
extract, although with some difficulty, two positions ; first, that 
in Mr. Monroe's opinion. Congress had no power to raise money 
by erecting toll-gates and collecting tolls, and that the States 
cannot individually grant such a power to Congress by their 
votes in Congress, or by any special compact with the United 
States ; secondly, that Congress having an unlimited power to 
raise money by taxation general and uniform throughout the 
United States, its absolute discretion in the appropriation of 
the money so raised is restricted only by the duty of appropria- 
ting to the purposes of the common defence, and of general, not 
local, benefit. The first of these positions will be conceded by 
every one. The second admits of some doubt. Its soundness 
depends upon the true interpretation of the first of the enu- 
merated powers of the Federal Constitution, that which contains 
the grant of the taxing power.* This is not the place to enter 
upon the discussion of controverted questions of constitutional 
interpretation. But all students of the Federal Constitution are 
aw\are that the grammatical construction of the clause to which 
Mr. Monroe referred, admits of, and has been claimed to admit 
of, two interpretations. Pead by itself, and without reference to 
the other enumerated powers, this clause has been supposed by 

* Art. I., § 8.—" To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts 
and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States ; but all 
duties, imposts, and excises slidl be uniform throughout the United States." 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 35 

some persons to grant an unlimited power to tax for any pur- 
pose that in the judgment of Congress will promote the general 
welfare of the United States, provided only that the taxation 
is uniform. On the other hand, it has been contended that 
the clause is not a broad, independent, and specific power to 
tax for any object that will promote the general welfare of 
the United States, but that it is limited to the promotion 
of the general welfare through the exercise of some one or 
more of the other enumerated powers of the Constitution, each 
of which must receive its own scope from a just interpretation 
before the people of the United States can be taxed for the 
means of exercising that pow'er. Viewed in the latter sense, 
the clause contains a grant of the power of taxation, general 
and universal in its nature, but limited as to its objects by the 
objects of each of the other enumerated powers. Viewed in 
the former sense, it becomes a separate and independent power 
to tax for any object that will promote the general welfare, 
without reference to the exercise of any of the specific powers 
of the Constitution which form the objects for which the Fed- 
eral Government was created. 

Mr. Monroe's veto message on this occasion was sustained in 
the House by a vote of 68 to 72, and the bill consequently 
failed. The vote of the House, however, is to be considered 
as a concurrence in Mr. Monroe's objection that Congress can- 
not establish toll-gates and collect tolls, and not as an affirmance 
of the general views which he expressed on the taxing power. 
But upon Mr. Buchanan this message produced a strong effect. 
It was the first time that his mind had been brought sharply to 
the consideration of the questions in what mode " Internal Im- 
provements," as they were called, can be effected by the Gen- 
eral Government, and consequently he began to perceive the 
dividing line betw^een the Federal and the State powers. 
Although he had voted for the bill imposing tolls upon the 
Cumberland Road, influenced probably by the desire to dimin- 
ish its injurious competition M'ith the Pennsylvania road, he 
took occasion at the next session to retract the error of which 
he had been convinced by Mr. Monroe's message. When a bill 
was introduced at the next session, making an appropriation for 
the preservation and repair of the Cumberland Road, he moved 



36 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN, 

as an amendment that tlie United States retrocede tlie road to 
tlie three States through which it passed, on condition that they 
would keep it in repair and collect no more tolls than such as 
would be necessary for that purpose. Being now convinced 
that Congress could not impose the tolls, he thought the only 
alternative was to cede the road to the States, since it could not 
be supported from the Federal Treasury without producing 
inequality and injustice. His amendment was rejected and the 
bill was passed.* A precedent was thus established for the sup- 
port of the road by Congress. The subject will again recur in 
1829 and 1836. In Mr. Buchanan's speech in 1829 will be 
found the expression of his more matured constitutional views 
on the whole subject of Internal Improvements. f 

The 17th Congress, which commenced its session in December, 
1822, and terminated in March, 1823, witnessed a protracted dis- 
cussion on the doctrine of " protection," which extended into 
the 18th Congress. The tariff of 1823-4 was the second mea- 
sure of that kind after the war. At that period the prevalent 
doctrine in the New England States was Anti-protectionist. 
The city of Boston was represented by Mr. Benjamin Gorham, 
a lawyer of remarkable ability, the immediate predecessor of 
Mr. Webster. His speech against the new tariff was replied to 
by Mr. Buchanan ; and if the reply is a fair indication of the 
speech against which it was directed, Mr. Gorham's language 
must have been vehement.:}: Mr. Buchanan said : 

" The gentleman from Massachusetts has declared this bill to be an at- 
tempt, by one portion of the Union for its own peculiar advantage, to impose 
ruinous taxes on another. He has represented it as an effort to compel the 
agriculturists of the South to pay tribute to the manufacturers of the North ; 
he has proclaimed it to be a tyrannical measure. He has gone further, and 
boldly declared that the people of the South should resist such a law, and that 
they ought to resist it. The gentlemen from Massachusetts and Georgia (Mr. 
Tattnall) have proclaimed it tyranny, and tj'ranny which ought to be resisted. 
I confess I never expected to hear inflammatory speeches of this kind within 
these walls which ought to be sacred to union; I never expected to hear 
the East counselling the South to resistance, that we might thus be deterred 
from prosecuting a measure of policy, urged upon us by the necessities of 
the country. It was by a combination between the cotton-growers of the 

* February 21, 1823. t Post, % Mr. Gorham's speccti has not been preserved. 



THE TARIFF. 37 

South and the manufacturers of the North, that the introduction of coarse 
cottons from abroad has been in eJBfect prohibited by the high rates of duties. 
It is ungenerous, then, for the South and the East to sound the tocsin of 
alarm and resistance when we wish indirectly to benefit the agriculturists 
and manufacturers of the Middle and Western States by the imposition of 
necessary duties. If I knoAV myself, I am a politician neither of the East nor 
of the West, of the North nor of the South; I, therefore, shall forever avoid 
any expressions, the direct tendency of which must be to create sectional 
jealousies, sectional divisions, and, at length, disunion — that worst and last of 
all political calamities. I will never consent to adopt a general restrictive 
system, because the agricultural class of the community would then be left at 
the mercy of the manufacturers. The interest of the many would thus be 
sacrificed to promote the wealth of the few. The farmer, in addition to the 
premium which he would be compelled to pay the manufacturer, would have 
also to sustain the expenses of the Government. If this bill proposed a sys- 
tem which leads to such abuses, it should not receive my support. If I could, 
for a single moment, believe in the language of the gentleman from Georgia — 
that this bill would compel the agricultural to bow down before the manufac- 
turing interest — I should consider myself a traitor to my country in giving it 
any support." 

In the subsequent Congress, Mr. Buchanan spoke twice on 
the subject of the tariff, namely, March 23d and April 9th, 1821. 
But the foregoing extract from his speech in February, 1823, is 
sufficient to show how moderate and just his views were on the 
subject of protection. 

When Mr. Buchanan entered Congress in December, 1821, 
his professional income was the largest that he ever received, 
lie had then been eight years at the bar, and his emoluments 
from his profession, which were less than $1,000 for the first 
year, had become more than $11,000 for the year 1821-2. 
They then fell off somewhat rapidly, and in the year 182S they 
amounted to only a little more than $2,000. 



CHAPTER III. 

1824— 1825. 

ELECTION OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS — THE " BAEGAIN AND COEETJPTION " 

XJNFOUNDED CHARGE— GENERAL JACKSON' S ERRONEOUS IMPRESSION 

HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. BUCHANAN. 

I NOW approach one of those periods of intense political ex- 
citement which it becomes every one who has to write of 
them to treat in an entirely impartial and judicial spirit. The 
subject of this chapter is the Presidential election of 1824,* and 
Mr. Buchanan's connection Avith it. The famous " coalition " 
between Mr. John Quincy Adams and Mr. Clay, is a topic that 
involves so much that is personal, that one must needs divest 
one's self of all preconceived opinions, and must regard the 
whole matter with that indifference which the present age 
already feels, and which is solicitous only to do no injustice to 
individual reputations. At the same time, the whole case 
should be plainly stated ; for it touches a provision of the Con- 
stitution, by which its framers supplied a means for filling the 
office of President, in the event of there being no choice through 
the electoral colleges. 

In the year 1824, there were 261 electoral votes in the Union, 
a majority being 131. The candidates at the popular election 
were General Jackson, Mr. John Quincy Adams, Mr. Craw- 
ford, and Mr. Clay. Is'either of them was the candidate of a 
distinctively organized political party. General Jackson was a 
member of the Senate, from the State of Tennessee. Mr. 
Adams was Secretary of State, under President Monroe. Mr. 
Crawford, who had formerly been a Senator from Georgia, 
was not in any public position. Mr. Clay was a Kepresentative 

* The phrase " Presidential Election " is an awkward and incorrect one. But it has 
been sanctioned by long usage, and I adopt it because of its convenience. 



ELECTION OF JOHN QUINCT ADAAIS. 39 

from Kentucky, and was cliosen Speaker of the House at the 
beginning of the session. JSTeither of these candidates having 
received a majority of the electoral votes, the election of a 
President devolved on the House of Eepresentatives, in which 
body each State would have one vote. But as the Constitution 
required that the choice of the House be confined to the three 
highest candidates on the list of those voted for by the electors, 
and as Mr. Clay was not one of the three, he was excluded. 
He and his friends, however, had it in their power to make 
either General Jackson or Mr. Adams President; and Mr. 
Clay at all times had great control over his friends. How he 
would cast his vote, and how he would lead his followers who 
were members of the House to cast theirs, became therefore an 
intensely exciting subject of speculation both in "Washington 
and throughout the country. For a short time it was supposed 
that Mr. Clay and the other members from Kentucky would be 
governed by a resolution adopted by both branches of the Legis- 
lature of that State, requesting their members of Congress to 
vote for General Jackson. This resolution had been adopted in 
the Kentucky House of Eepresentatives on the 31st of Decem- 
ber (1824), by a majority of 73 to 11 ; and in the Senate of the 
State it was adopted by a vote of IS to 13. It spoke what was 
the undoubted^ wish of the people of Kentucky, whose first 
choice for the' office of President v/as Mr. Clay himself, but 
whose preference for General Jackson to Mr. Adams was ex- 
plicitly declared by their Legislature.* General Jackson had 
received the unanimous electoral votes of eight States : l^ew Jer- 
sey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, 
Mississippi, Indiana, and Alabama. Mr. Adams had received 
the unanimous electoral votes of the six New England States. 
If the Eepresentatives of these various States in Congress should 
vote as their States had voted, it would require but five addi- 
tional States to elect General Jackson, while seven would be 
needed to elect Mr. Adams. Of the remaining States which 
had not unanimously given their electoral votes to General 
Jackson or to Mr. Adams, it appears that General Jackson 



* Mr. Crawford was regarded as out of the question, both because he had less than one- 
half of the electoral votes, and because a recent paralytic affection was supposed to have 
rendered him incapable of performing the duties of the office. 



40 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

received one of tlie electoral votes of Xew York, Mr. Adams 
received twenty-six, and Mr. Crawford live. Delaware had 
given one of its electoral votes to Mr. Adams and two to 
Mr. Crawford. General Jackson had seven of the electoral 
votes of Maryland, Mr. Adams three, and Mr. Crawford one. 
Viro-inia had given all of her electoral votes, twenty-four, to 
Mr. Crawford. Louisiana had given three of her electoral votes 
to General Jackson, and two to Mr. Adams. The electoral 
votes of Illinois had gone two for General Jackson, and one 
for Mr. Adams. Which of these doubtful States would be won 
in the great contest for General Jackson, and which for Mr. 
Adams, was now the all-absorbing topic, and the result depended 
very much upon the course of Mr. Clay. 

Among the scandals which hung around this election, it was 
afterward said that Mr, Buchanan, while the matter was pend- 
ing before the House of Representatives in the winter of 
1821-5, had, as an agent or friend of Mr. Clay, approached 
General Jackson and sought to secure his promise to make Mr. 
Clay Secretary of State, in consideration of his receiving Mr. 
Clay's vote and influence in the House. There was not much 
intrinsic probability in this imputation, for the relatious 
between Mr. Clay and Mr. Buchanan were not such as would 
naturally have led to the selection of the latter as Mr. Clay's 
agent in such a negotiation, even if Mr. Clay had been capable 
of making such an attempt to obtain from General Jackson a 
promise to make him Secretary of State, while the election of a 
President was pending in the House. But iuasmuch as Gen- 
eral Jackson, nearly twenty years afterward, was quoted in sup- 
port of this statement, it is proper that I should lay before the 
reader Mr. Buchanan's own explicit account of what actually 
took place. It will be seen hereafter that General Jackson, who 
always believed that there had been a corrupt political bargain 
between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, was led afterwards to think 
that Mr. Buchanan had at the time of the election entertained 
the same belief, and yet that Mr. Buchanan had refrained from 
denouncing the bargain as he should have done, because he had 
himself made the same kind of attempt for Mr. Clay, in the 
conversation which he had with General Jackson before the 
election took place. Mr. Buchanan's own account of his inter- 



THE "BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION." 41 

view with General Jackson shows very clearly that, instead of 
seeking an interview with General Jackson for the purpose of pro- 
posing to him to make a bargain with Mr. Clay about the office 
of Secretary of State, his sole object was to obtain from General 
Jackson a denial of a prevailing rumor that he had said he 
would continue Mr. Adams in that office, if elected President. 

At the time of this occurrence, Mr. Buchanan was a com- 
paratively young member of Congress, in the beginning of his 
fourth session. Speaking of himself in the third person, he 
says in a memorandum now before me, " He [Buchanan] had 
never personally known either General Jackson or Mr. Clay 
until about the opening of this Congress, when the one took 
his seat as a Senator from Tennessee, and the other was elected 
Speaker of the House. Having great confidence in the sound 
political principles and exalted character of General Jackson, 
and greatly preferring him to any of the other candidates, he 
[Buchanan] had taken a very active part before the jDcople of 
Pennsylvania in securing for him their electoral vote. Still, he 
was at the same time a warm admirer of Mr. Clay." 

The prevalent rumor that General Jackson had said he would 
continue Mr. Adams in the office of Secretary of State, in case 
of his election to the Presidency, was supposed to derive some 
color of probability from their known friendly relations, and 
from the defence which Mr. Adams had made of the General's 
conduct in the Seminole war. It was a rumor that greatly dis- 
turbed General Jackson's friends and supporters in Pennsyl- 
vania. They regarded Mr. Adams' constitutional views as 
much too latitudinarian for the leading position in General 
Jackson's cabinet ; and they feared that the General's announce- 
ment of such a purpose would stand in the way of his election 
by the House of Representatives. Mr. Buchanan fully shared 
this anxiety of his Pennsylvania constituents and political 
friends ; and with the approbation and advice of a leading gen- 
tleman among this class of General Jackson's supporters, Mr. 
Buchanan determined to ascertain from the General himself 
whether there was any foundation for the rumor.* He first 



* The person here alluded to was the Hon. Molton C. Rogers, Chairman of the State 
Central Committee at Harrisburg, and Secretary of the State of Peunsylvauia. He was after- 
Mards a Judge of the Supreme Court of that State. 



42 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

endeavored to obtain tlie information from Major Eaton, the 
colleague of General Jackson in the Senate, and his most 
intimate friend. Major Eaton declined to make the inquiry. 
Mr. Buchanan then determined to make it himself. What fol- 
lows is from Mr. Buchanan's own account of the interview, 
which lies before me in his handwriting ; 

Calling at the General's lodgings in " the Seven Buildings," Mr. Buchanan 
accompanied him, on his own invitation, in a walk as far as the War Depart- 
ment, where the General had to call on public business. After a suitable 
introduction and reference to the rumor afloat, Mr. Buchanan requested him 
to state Avhether he had ever declared that in case he should be elected Presi- 
dent he would appoint Mr. Adams Secretary of State. To this he rephed by 
saying that whilst he thought well of Mr. Adams, he had never said or inti- 
mated that he Avould or would not make this appointment. With this 
answer, Mr. Buchanan was entirely satisfied, and so expressed himself. The 
object of his mission was thus accomplished. The General's answer was 
positive and emphatic. It made a deep and lasting impression on his only 
auditor, who requested permission to repeat it, and he gave it without 
reserve. 

This, however, was not the whole of the conversation ; and 
in order to explain how this conversation became afterwards dis- 
torted into the appearance of an application by Mr. Buchanan 
to General Jackson on behalf of Mr. Clay, it is necessary to 
advert to something which took place between Mr. Buchanan 
and Mr. Philip S. Markley, another Representative from the 
State of Pennsylvania, before Mr. Buchanan spoke to General 
Jackson. Mr. Markley had been a devoted advocate of Mr. 
Clay for the Presidency. He urged Mr. Buchanan to see Gen- 
eral Jackson, and to persuade him either to say that Mr. Clay 
should be Secretary of State, or to remain absolutely silent as 
between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams ; " for then," as he re- 
marked, " the friends of Mr. Clay would be placed upon the same 
footing with the friends of Mr. Adams, and fight them with 
their own weapons." If Mr. Buchanan had made any proposi- 
tion to General Jackson respecting Mr. Clay, there might have 
been some foundation for the subsequent charge that Mr. Bu- 
chanan approached the General as an emissary of Mr. Clay. 
But, in point of tact, Mr. Buchanan did nothing of the kind. 
After the General had given him the assurance that he had 



UNFOUNDED CHARGES. 43 

never said lie would or would not appoint Mr. Adams Secretary 
of State, and before they parted, Mr. Buchanan mentioned, as 
an item of current news, what he had heard Mr, Marklej say. 
It does not appear to have produced upon General Jackson, at 
the time, any impression that Mr. Buchanan wished him to 
hold out any encouragement to the friends of Mr. Clay that in 
the event of his election he would make Mr. Clay Secretary of 
State. On the contrary, from what General Jackson said in 
answer to Mr, Buchanan's sole inquiry, it is apparent that Mr, 
Buchanan obtained the only answer that he sought to obtain, 
namely, that the General had not said that he would or would 
not appoint Mr. Adams as his Secretary of State. Mr. 
Buchanan continues his account of the interview as follows : 

" When I parted from tlie General, I felt conscious that I had done my 
duty, and no more than my duty, towards him and my party, as one of his 
most ardent and consistent political friends. Indeed the idea did not enter 
my imagination at the time that the General could have afterwards inferred 
from any thing I said, that I had approached him as the emissary of Mr, 
Clay, to propose to elect him President, provided that he (the General) 
would agree to appoint him Secretary of State, It is but justice to observe 
that the General stated, in his subsequent publication, that I did not represent 
myself to be the friend and agent of Mr. Clay, Surely, if Mr. Clay had 
desired or intended to have made such a bargain, he would have selected as 
his agent an old political and personal friend. Events passed on," Mr, 
Buchanan continues; "then came the letter of Mr. George Kremer to the 
Columbian Observer, of the 25th of January, 1825, charging the existence of 
a corrupt bargain between Messrs. Adams and Clay ; his avowal of its 
authorship, the appeal of Mr. Clay to the House of Representatives against 
the charges it contained, the report of the Committee on the subject, and, on 
the same day, the election of Mr. Adams as President of the United States 
by the House of Eepresentatives ; Mr. Adams receiving the vote of thirteen 
States, including that of Kentucky, General Jackson of seven States, and 
Mr. Crawford of four States. During all the debates and proceedings of the 
House, on Mr. Clay's appeal against the charges of Mr. Kremer, it was never 
intimated to me, in the most distant manner, by any human being, that I was 
expected to be a witness to sustain this charge, or had any connection with 
the subject more than any other member of the House. 

" The conduct of General Jackson, after his defeat, was admirable. He 
bore it with so much dignity and magnanimity, and perfect self-control, as to 
elicit strong commendations, even from his political opponents. At President 
Monroe's levee, on the evening of the election, where he and Mr. Adams 
were both present, it was repeatedly remai'ked, froaa the courtesy and kind- 



44 LIFE OF JAJIES BUCHANAN. 

ness of his manner and conversation, contrasted -with tlie coldness and reserve 
of Mr. Adams, that a stranger might have inferred he had been the 
successful and Mr. Adams the defeated candidate." 

The election of Mr. Adams by the House of Representatives 
was followed after the adjournment of Congress by a corres- 
pondence between Mr. Buchanan and General Jackson, com- 
mencing in tlie spring of 1825 and extending to August, 1827. 
This correspondence shows, first, the terms on which Geiieral 
Jackson and Mr. Buchanan parted in Washington in the spring 
of 1825; and in the next place it fixes the time and mode in 
which the idea was first presented to the mind of General Jack- 
son that Mr. Buchanan came to him in December, 1821, as a 
friend of Mr. Clay. The reader will observe that, while the 
election of Mr. Adams was a recent event, while the country 
was ringing with the charge of a " corrupt coalition " between 
Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, and down to the 29th of January, 
1827, during the whole of which period General Jackson's 
mind was peculiarly excited by what he may have believed 
concerning the means by which his rival had become Presi- 
dent, there is no trace in this correspondence of any feeling 
on his part that Mr. Buchanan had ever been in any way 
connected with the supposed bargain, or with any effort 
to make a similar bargain between General Jackson and 
Mr. Clay, or that Mr. Buchanan knew of any important fact 
that would tend to support the charge of a bargain between 
Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay. It was not until the summer of 
1827, nearly three years after the conversation between General 
Jackson and Mr. Buchanan, that the General appears to have 
had an erroneous impression of Mr. Buchanan's purpose in 
seeking that interview. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

May 29, 1825. 
My Dear General : — 

I write this letter from Mercersburg, being now on a visit to my mother 
and the family. I have no news of any importance to communicate, but both 
inclination and duty conspire to induce me to trouble you occasionally with a 
few lines, Avhilst you must be gratefully remembered by every American 
citizen who feels an interest in the character of his country's glory. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEN. JACKSON. 45 

You have imposed additional obligations upon me by the uniform kindness 
and courtesy with which you have honored me. 

In Pennsylvania, amongst a vast majority of the people, there is but one 
sentiment concerning the late Presidential election. Although they submit 
patiently, as is their duty, to the legally constituted powers, yet there is a 
fixed and determined resolution to change them as soon as they have the con- 
stitutional power to do so. In my opinion, your popularity in Pennsylvania 
is now more firmly established than ever. Many persons who heretofore 
supported you did it cheerfully from a sense of gratitude, and because they 
thought it would be disgraceful to the people not to elevate that candidate to 
the Presidential Chair, who had been so great a benefactor of the country. 
The slanders which had been so industriously circulated against your character 
had, nevertheless, in some degree affected their minds, although they never 
doubted either your ability or patriotism, yet they expressed fears concerning 
your temper. These have been all dissipated by the mild prudence and dig- 
nity of your conduct last winter, before and after the Presidential election. 
The majority is so immense in your favor that there is little or no newspaper 
discussion on the subject. I most sincerely and fervently trust and hope that 
the Almighty will preserve 3-our health until the period shall again arrive 
when the sovereign people shall have the power of electing a President. 

There never was a weaker attempt made than that to conciliate the good 
opinion of Pennsylvania in favor of the administration by the appointment of 
Mr. Rush, although no appointment could have produced the effect desired ; 
yet, if the President had selected Mr. Sergeant, he would have chosen a man 
who had been his early and consistent friend, and one whose character for 
talents and integrity stands high with all parties in this State. Mr. Rush was 
a candidate for the office of elector on the Crawford ticket. I verily believe 
his appointment will not procure for the administration, out of the city of 
Philadelphia, twenty new friends throughout the State. In that city their 
additional strength is limited to John Binns and a few of his devoted followers. 

I hope Mrs. Jackson, ere this, has been restored to her accustomed health. 
When I left her, I felt some apprehensions in relation to the issue of her 
disease. Please to present to her my kindest and best respects, and beheve 
me to be ever your sincere friend, 

James Buchanan. 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BtJCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, June 25, 1825. 
Dear Sir: — 

I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of your kind letter of the 
29th ult., which has just reached me. 

That respect which I formed for your character on our first acquaintance 
increased with our friendly intercourse, and to you was only extended what 
I viewed a debt due to your merit as a gentleman of intelligence and urban- 



46 



LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



itj. It is, therefore, a source of much gratification to me to receive a letter 
from you, detailing the friendly feelings of the citizens of Pennsylvania toward 



me. 



It is gratifying to hear, through you, that the confidence and support 
which the majority of the citizens of Pennsylvania expressed for me, by 
their vote on the Presidential question, will not be withdrawn by the artful 
and insidious efi"orts of my enemies. This is another evidence of the firmness 
and indulgence of the freemen of Pennsylvania. This organized plan of 
calumny and slander, levelled against me by the unprincipled and wicked, will 
not owe its defeat to any effort of mine, unless it be that which always 
attends truth and a conscious rectitude of conduct, when submitted to an un- 
trammelled and honest public. The continued good opinion, therefore, of my 
fellow-citizens of Pennsylvania, lays me under additional obligations, whUst it 
connects my name with another guaranty of the wisdom of our government 

I mean in furnishing to posterity another example of the weakness of 

demagogues when endeavoring to advance to power upon the destruction of 



innocence. 



It is much to the honor of the good citizens of Pennsylvania that they 
calmly submit to the legally constituted power; this all good citizens will do, 
who love a government of laws, although they show much disapprobation at 
the means by which that power was obtained, and are determined to oppose 
the men who obtained power by what they beheve illicit means. The great 
constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of 
power, or corruption by their agents, is the right of suffrage ; and this, when 
used with calmness and deliberation, will prove strong enough. It will per- 
petuate their liberties and rights, and will compel their representatives to dis- 
charge their duties with an eye single to the public interest, for whose secu- 
rity and advancement government is constituted. 

I have not yet been so fortunate as to fall in with Mr. Frazer, although I 
have made inquiry for him. Should I meet with him, be assured it will be a 
gratification to me to extend to him those attentions due to any of your 
friends. 

I regret very much that the bad health of Mrs. J, prevented me from 
passing tln-oiigh your hospitable town. I assure yoU; could we have done so,' 
it would have afforded Mrs. J. and myself much pleasure. Mrs. J.'s health 
is perfectly restored. So soon as I got her to breathe the mountain air of 
Pennsylvania, she mended by the hour. 

We are also blessed, in this section of the country, with the promise of 
fine crops. Our cotton promises a good crop. This is six days earlier than 
ever known in this section of country. 

Mrs. J. joins me in kind salutations to you, with our best wishes for your 
happiness. Your friend, 

Andrew Jacksox. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEN. JACKSON. 47 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, April 8, 1826. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received, by due course of mail, your friendly letter of the 8th ult., trans- 
mitting a resolution passed by the Convention at Harrisburg, in which it is 
declared " that their confidence in me is unimpaired." This resolution adds 
another to the many obligations which I owe to the Republicans of Pennsyl- 
vania, and which shall be cherished as long as the feelino-g of o-ratitude and 
the sentiments of patriotism have a place in my heart. What f>Teater con- 
solation could be offered to my declining years than the reflection that my 
public conduct, notwithstanding the difficulties through which it has led me, 
can still be honored with testimonials so distinguished as this from the 
enlightened and patriotic Pennsylvanians ; I desire no greater. 

I have noted your remarks relative to Mr. Molton C. Rogers — every in- 
formation I have received concerning him corroborates your account of him, 
and I have no doubt he fully merits the high character he sustains. 

We have received the result of the Panama question in the Senate. From 
the whole view of the subject I have been compelled to believe that it is a 
hasty, unadvised measure, calculated to involve us in difficulties, perhaps war, 
without receiving in return any real benefit. The maxim that it is easier to 
avoid difficulties than to remove them when they have reached us, is too old 
not to be true ; but perhaps this and many other good sayings, are becoming 
inapplicable in the present stage of our public measures, which seem to be so 
far removed from our {illegible) that even the language of Washington must 
be transjDosed in order to be reconciled to the councils of wisdom. I hope I 
may be wrong — it is my sincere wish that this Panama movement may ad- 
vance the happiness and glory of the country — but if it be not a commitment 
of our neutrality with Spain, and indirectly with other powers, as, for 
example, Brazil, I have misconstrued very much the signification of the an- 
athemas which have been pronounced upon the Assembly at Verona, as well 
as the true sense of the principles which form international law. Let the 
primary interests of Europe be what they may, or let our situation vary as 
far as you please from that which we occupied when the immortal Wash- 
ington retired from the councils of his country, I cannot see, for my part, 
how it follows that the primary interests of the United States will be 
safer in the hands of others than in her own ; or, in other words, that it 
can ever become necessary to form treaties, alliances, or any connections 
with the governments of South America, which may infringe upon the 
principles of equality among nations which is the basis of their independ- 
ence, as well as all their international rights. The doctrine of Washington 
is as applicable to the present, as to the then primary interests of Europe, 
so far as our own peace and happiness are concerned, and I have no hesi- 
tation in saying, so far as the true interests of South America are concerned 
— maugre the discovery of Mr. Adams, that if Washington was now with us. 



48 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

he Tvould unite with him in sending this mission to Panama. No one feels 
more for the cause of the South Americans than I do, and if the proper time 
had arrived, I trust that none would more willingly march to their defence. 
But there is a wide difference between reHeving them from a combination 
of league powers, and aiding them in forming a confederation which can do 
no good, as far as I am apprised of its objects, and which we all know, let 
its objects be the best, will contain evil tendencies. 

Believe me to be, with great respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

Andrew Jackson. 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, Oct. 15, 1826. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I was very much gratified on the receipt of your letter of the 21st uU., 
which reached me yesterday, and thank you for the information it contains. 
I want language to express the gratitude I feel for the unsolicited, but gen- 
erous support of the great Republican State of Pennsylvania— did I lack a 
stimulus to exert all my faculties to promote the best interests of my 
country, this alone Avould be sufficient. Who could abandon the path of 
Republican virtue when thus supported by the volunta,ry approbation of the 
enlightened and virtuous citizens of such a State as Pennsylvania? I 
answer, none whose minds have been matured in the schools of virtue, re- 
ligion and riiorality. 

I am happy to learn that Mr. Cheves has become your neighbor and 
a citizen — he is a great blessing to any society — he has a well-stored mind 
of useful information, which he will employ to the benefit of his country and 
the happiness of the society to which he belongs. Please present me to 
him respectfully. 

I regret to learn that the drought has visited your section of country, and 
your crops are not abundant ; still, so long as we have a supply of breadstuSs 
and other substantials, we ought to be thankful and happy. When we con- 
trast our situation with Ireland and England, we ought to view ourselves as 
the chosen people of God, who has given us such a happy government of 
laws and placed us in such a climate and fertile soil. We ouglit not only to 
be thankful, but we ought to cherish and foster this heavenly boon Avith 
vestal vigilance. 

Mrs. J. joins me in kind salutations and respects to you. 
I am, very respectfully, your friend, 

Andrew Jackson. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEN. JACKSON. 49 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, Jan. 29, 1827. 
Dear Sir : — 

Your favor of the 19tli has been before me for some time, but observing 
in the papers the obituary notice of your brother, whose illness took you from 
the city, I have delayed acknowledging its receipt until advised of your re- 
turn. I pray you to accept my sincere condolence for the serious loss you 
have sustained in the death of your brother. 

I suspect the Administration beginS' to perceive the necessity of public 
confidence, without which it is an arduous undertaking to execute the solemn 
duties confided by the Constitution to the Chief Magistrate. The Panama 
" bubble " and the loss of the trade with the British West Indies are the result 
of this defect in the Cabinet, for it cannot be supposed that such reputed 
diplomatists would have committed errors so obvious, had not some influence 
stronger than the public good operated upon their minds. My hope, how- 
ever, is that the wisdom of Congress may remedy these blunders, and that 
my friends the " factious opposition " may, in your own language, never 
forget the support due to the country. 

I had predicted, from the movements of {illegible) and Rochester, that 
the Panama subject was done with, and that the charge of "factious 

opposition " would be hushed, but it appears I was mistaken. is to 

be the theatre on which these mighty projects are to be unfolded. Alas! 
what folly and weakness ! 

Present me to my friend Mr. Kremer, and believe me. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

Andrew Jackson. 

In the spring of 1827, Mr. Carter Beverley, of Virginia, was 
on a visit to General Jackson at the " Hermitage." The con- 
versation turned on the incidents which preceded the election 
of Mr. Adams, and General Jackson gave some account of his 
interview with Mr. Buchanan in December, 1824r, speaking of 
Mr. Buchanan, however, not by name, but as " a leading mem- 
ber of Congress." Mr. Beverley wrote an account of this con- 
versation to a friend in North Carolina, who published his 
letter. Mr. Beverley afterward wrote to General Jackson, 
saying that his letter was not intended for publication, but 
asking if its statements were correct. General Jackson, Avithout 
seeing Mr. Beverley's published letter, then wrote an answer to 
Mr. Beverley, which was published, and in which he stated 
that '• a leading member of Congress " had, as the agent or 

I.— 4 



50 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

confidential friend of Mr. Clay, proposed to liim to engage to 
make Mr. Clay Secretary of State, and that he emphatically 
declined to do so. Subsequently, in another publication, Gen- 
eral Jackson gave the name of Mr. Buchanan as the member 
who had thus approached him. The public was thus (in 1827) 
electrified by a statement, coming from General Jackson him- 
self, that Mr, Clay, who had been charged with purchasing his 
appointment by Mr. Adams as Secretary of State, by his 
promise to make Mr, Adams President, had attempted, through 
Mr, Buchanan, to negotiate the same kind of corrupt bargain 
with General Jackson, on the like promise to make General 
Jackson President, It is very easy to see how this mistake 
first arose in the General's mind. Recollecting the information 
which Mr. Buchanan had given him of the over-zealous and 
imprudent conversation of Mr. Markley, who was a known 
partisan of Mr. Clay, — information which Mr. Buchanan 
assigned as a reason why the General should disavow the 
rumor that he had promised to appoint Mr. Adams Secretary, 
— General Jackson had evidently come to misunderstand the 
object of Mr. Buchanan in mentioning what Mr. Markley had 
said. It must be remembered that at this time (1827) there 
was an angry and excited controversy going on, respecting the 
supposed bargain between Mr. Clay and Mr, Adams ; that 
Mr, Clay was publishing, and that General Jackson was pub- 
lishing ; that General Jackson undoubtedly believed that 
there had been an improper understanding between Mr. 
Adams and Mr, Clay, and it was very natural for him to 
take up the idea that Mr, Buchanan, by mentioning what 
Mr. Markley had said, stood ready, as a friend of Mr, Clay, 
to j^ropose and carry out a similar bargain with himself. 
Apart from Mr. Buchanan's denial, there seems to be an intrin- 
sic improbability that one who had been an earnest supporter 
of General Jackson in the popular election, and who feared that 
even a rumor of his intended appointment of Mr. Adams 
would injure the General in the House of Pepresentatives, and 
who knew that it would greatly injure him in Pennsylvania, if 
it were not contradicted, should have exerted himself to get 
from the General a promise to make Mr. Clay Secretary of 
State. Promises, or rumors of promises, in regard to this 



GENERAL JACKSON'S ERRONEOUS IMPRESSION. 51 

appointment, were the very things which Mr Buchanan was 
interested to prevent. It was very unfortunate that General 
Jackson did not afterwards and always see, that the mention by 
Mr. Buchanan of Mr. Markley's wishes, was intended to present 
to his (the General's) mind the importance of his denial of the 
rumor that he had said he would appoint Mr. Adams. In all 
that scene of intrigue — and apart from any thing said or done 
by the principal persons concerned in that great struggle, there 
was intrigue— General Jackson acted with the rigid integrity 
that belonged to his character. Mr. Buchanan acted with no 
less integrity. He wished to prevent General Jackson's cause 
from being injured in the House and in the country, by nn- 
founded rumors with which the heated atmosphere of Washing- 
ton was filled ; and he could have had no motive for seeking to 
make Mr. Clay Secretary of State, at the expense of exposing 
General Jackson to the same kind of rumor in regard to Mr. 
Clay which he was anxious to counteract in regard to Mr. 
Adams. 

After the publication of General Jackson's letter to Mr. 
Beverley, Mr. Buchanan wrote to a friend as follows : 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MR. INGHAM.] 

Lancaster, July 12, 1827. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received yours yesterday evening, and hasten to give it an immediate 
answer. With you, I regret the publication of General Jackson's letter to 
Mr. Beverley. It may do harm, but cannot do good. The conversation which 
I held with the General will not sustain his letter, although it may furnish a 
sufficient reason for his apprehensions. My single purpose was to ascertain 
from him whether he had ever declared he would appoint Mr. Adams Secre- 
tary of State in case he were elected President. As to the propriety and 
policy of propounding this question to him, I had reflected much, and had 
taken the advice of a distinguished Jackson man, then high in office in Penn- 
sylvania. I had no doubt at the time that my question, if answered at all, 
Avould be answered in the negative ; but I wished it to come from himself 
that he stood uncommitted upon this subject. 

In my interview with the General (which, by the way, was in the street), 
I stated the particulars of a conversation between Philip S, Markley and my- 
self, as one reason why he should answer the question which I had pro- 
pounded. Out of my repetition of this conversation the mistake must have 
arisen. This conversation would be one link in the chain of testimony, but 
of itself it is altogether incomplete. 



52 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

How General Jackson could have believed I came to him as an emissary 
from Mr. Clay or his friends to make a corrupt bargain with him in their 
behalf I am at a loss to determine. He could not have received the impres- 
sion until after Mr. Clay and his friends had actually elected Mr. Adams, and 
Adams had appointed Clay Secretary of State. Although I continued to be 
upon terms of the strictest intimacy with General Jackson whilst he con- 
tinued at Washington, and have corresponded with him occasionally since, he 
has never adverted to the subject. From the terms of his letters to me, I 
never could have suspected that he for a moment supposed me capable of 
becomin"' the agent in such a negotiation. The idea that such was his 
impression never once flitted across my mind. 

When regularly called upon, I need not tell you that I shall speak the 
truth. If the matter be properly managed, it will not injure General Jack- 
son ; but I can readily conceive that such a course may be taken in rela- 
tion to it by some of our friends, as will materially injure his prospects. 

From your friend, 

James Buchanan, 

At about this time, Mr. Clay publicly disclaimed all knowl- 
edge respecting the interview between Mr. Buchanan and Gen- 
eral Jackson, and the latter then wrote to Mr. Buchanan the 
following explanatory letter : 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, July 15, 1827. 
Dear Sir: — 

You will see from the enclosed publication of Mr. Clay repelling the state- 
ment made by me respecting the propositions said to have been made by his 
friends to mine and to me, and intended to operate upon the last election for 
President, that it becomes necessary for the public to be put in possession of 
the facts. In doing this you are aware of the position which you occupy, 
and which, I trust, you will sustain when properly called on. Ever since 
the pubUcation, and the inquiry before the House of Representatives in Jan- 
uary and February, 1825, questions have been propounded from various 
sources calculated to draw from me the information I had upon that unpleasant 
subject. Many, no doubt with sinister views, placing me in selfish connec- 
tion with the facts from my accustomed silence, have sought to fortify the 
character of Mr. Clay. But in a number of cases, where inquiry seemed to 
be prompted by a frank and generous desire to obtain the truth, I felt myself 
bound to answer in a corresponding spirit, and accordingly the statement 
made by you to me has been on several occasions repeated, as it was to Mr. 
Beverley, who visited me at my house, where he found a number of his friends 
and relatives. 



MR. CLAY SUSTAINS MR. BUCHANAN. 53 

Having remained all night, in the morning, conversing on pohtics, the 
question so often put to me before was asked by Mr. Beverley. It was 
answered. Mr. Beverley went to Nashville and wrote to his friend in North 
Carolina, who it appears published his letter. On the 15th of May last, he 
wrote me from Louisville, requesting to be informed whether the statement 
made by him was correct, and observing that his letter was not intended for 
pubUcation. Not having seen the letter, as published, there was no safe 
alternative for me but that adopted, of making the statement, as you will see 
in the enclosed paper. 

I shall now, in reply to Mr. Clay's appeal, give my authority, accompanied 
by the statement you made to Major John H. Eaton and to Mr. Kremer, and 
leave Mr. Clay to his further inquiries. He can not be indulged by me in a 
paper war, or newspaper discussion. Had his friends not voted out Mr. 
McDufi&e's resolutions when Mr. Clay threw himself upon the House, the 
truth or falsehood of these statements would have been made manifest, and 
the public mind now at rest upon the subject. That they did, will appear, 
reference being had to the National Journal of the 5th of February, 1825. 
Tou will recollect that Mr. McDuffie moved to instruct the Committee to 
inquire whether the friends of Mr. Clay had hinted that they would fight for 
those who paid best, and whether overtures were said to have been made by 
the friends of Mr. Clay, offering him the appointment of Secretary of State 
for his influence, and to elect Mr. Adams, and whether his friends gave this 
information to the friends of General Jackson and hinted that if the friends of 
Jackson would close with them, &c., &c., giving the Committee the power 
to examine on oath. 

I have no doubt, when properly called on, you will come forth and offer me 
the statement made to Major Eaton, then to Mr. Kremer, and then to me, 
and give the names of the friends of Mr. Clay who made it to you. 

I will thank you to acknowledge the receipt of this letter on its reaching 
you. 

I have the honor to be, with great respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

Andrew Jackson. 

Early in August, 1827, Mr. Buclianan published a card in 
tlie Lancaster Journal, embodying the recollections wbich I 
have given, but which it is not necessary to reproduce ; and 
after a brief but inconclusive reply from Mr. Markley, the 
matter passed out of the public mind. Later in the same year 
(1827) Mr. Clay published an elaborate vindication of his con- 
duct, in the course of v^hich he thus refers to Mr. Buchanan : 

" In General Jackson's letter to Mr. Beverley, of the 6th of June last, he 
admits that in inferring my privity to the proposition which he describes as 



54 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

borne by Mr. Buchanan, he may have done me injustice ; and, in his address 
to the pubHc of the 18th of July last, giving up the name of this gentleman 
as his only witness, he repeats that he possibly may have done me injustice, 
in assumin"' my authority for that proposition. He even deigns to honor me 
with a declaration of the pleasure which he will experience if I should be 
able to acquit myself! Mr. Buchanan has been heard by the public; and I 
feel justified in asserting that the first impression of the whole nation was, 
as it is yet that of every intelligent mind unbiased by party prejudice, that 
bis testimony fully exonerated me, and demonstrated that General Jackson, 
to say no more, had greatly misconceived the purport of the interview be- 
tween them. And further : that so far as any thing improper was disclosed 
by Mr. Buchanan touching the late Presidential election, it affected General 
Jackson and his friends exclusively. He having manifestly injured me, 
speculation was busy, when Mr. Buchanan's statement appeared, as to the 
course which the General would pursue, after his gratuitous expression of 
sympathy with me. There were not wanting many persons who behoved 
that his magnanimity would prompt him publicly to retract his charge, and to 
repair the wrong which he had done me. I did not participate in that just 
expectation, and therefore felt no disappointment that it was not realized. 
Whatever other merits he may possess, I have not found among them, in the 
course of my relations with him, that of forbearing to indulge vindictive 
passions. His silent contemplation of, if not his positive acquiescence in, the 
most extraordinary interpretation of Mr. Buchanan's statement that ever was 
given to human language, has not surprised me. If it had been possible for 
him to render me an act of spontaneous justice by a frank and manly avowal 
of his error, the testimony now submitted to the public might have been un- 
necessary. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MR. INGHAM.] 

Lancaster, August 9, 1827. 
Dear Sir: — 

Ere this can reach you, you will have seen General Jackson's letter to the 
public, in which he has given up my name. It will at once strike you to be a 
most extraordinary production as far as I am concerned. My statement will 
appear in the Lancaster Journal to-morrow, which I shall send you. I have 
not suffered ray feeUngs to get the better of my judgment, but have stated the 
truth in a calm and temperate manner. If General Jackson and our editors 
shall act with discretion, the storm may blow over without injuring [any one]. 
Should they, on the contrary, force me to the wall and make it absolutely 
necessary for the preservation of my own character to defend myself, I know 
not what may be the consequence. 

I have stated the conversation between Marklcy and myself in as strong 
terms as the truth would justify, but no stronger. It is in your power to do 
much to give this matter a proper direction. Indeed I would suggest to you 



GENERAL JACKSON'S ERRONEOUS IMPRESSION. 55 

the propriety of an immediate visit to Philadelphia for that purpose. My 
friends are very indignant, but I believe I can keep them right. 

You will perceive that General Jackson has cited Mr. Eaton as a witness. 
I have treated this part of his letter with great mildness. In a letter to me, 
which I received day before yesterday, the General intimates that George 
Kremer would confirm his statement. This letter is imprudent, and, in my 
opinion, an improper one. It is well it has fallen into the hands of a political 
friend. 

You will discover that your knowledge concerning my conversation with 

General Jackson was nearly correct. The friend who wrote me the letter of 

the 27th December, 1824, referred to in my communication, was Judge 

Rogers, then Secretary of State [of Pennsylvania]. 

From your sincere friend, 

Mr. Ingham. James Buchanan. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

Lancaster, August 10, 1827. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received your letter of the 15th ultimo on Tuesday last. Your address 
to the public also reached me upon the same day, in the Cincinnati Advertiser. 
This communication made it necessary for me to publish in detail the conversa- 
tion which I held with you concerning the Presidential election on the 30th 
December, 1824. I shall enclose to you in this letter that part of the Lancas- 
ter Journal containing it. I regret, beyond expression, that you believed me 
to be an emissary from Mr. Clay, since some time before the first Harrisburg 
convention which nominated you, I have ever been your ardent, decided, 
and, perhaps without vanity I may say, your efficient friend. Every person 
in this part of the State of Pennsylvania is well acquainted with the fact. It 
is, therefore, to me a matter of the deepest regret that you should have sup- 
posed me to be the " friend of Mr. Clay." Had I ever entertained a suspicion 
that such was your belief, I should have immediately corrected your impres- 
sion. 

I shall annex to this letter a copy of that which I wrote to Duff Green, 
on the IGth of October last. The person whom I consulted in Pennsylvania 
was the present Judge Rogers of the Supreme Court— then the Secretary 
of State of this Commonwealth. 

The friends of the Administration are making great efforts in Pennsylvania. 
We have been busily engaged during the summer in counteracting them. 
Success has, I think, hitherto attended our efforts. I do not fear the vote of 
the State, although it is believed every member of the State administration, 
except General Bernard, is hostile to your election. Your security will be 
in the gratitude and in the hearts of the people. 

Please to present my best respects to Mrs. Jackson, and believe me to be, 

very respectfully, your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



56 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

This subject of Mr, Buchanan's connection with the Presi- 
dential election of 1824r-5, and its incidents, passed ont of the 
public mind, after the publication of the letters which I have 
quoted. But it was again revived when Mr. Buchanan became 
a candidate for the Presidency in 185G. All that it is needful 
to say here is, that for nearly three years after the election of 
1824-5^ no impression seems to have existed in the mind of 
General Jackson that Mr. Buchanan's interview with him in 
December, 1824, had any purpose but that which Mr. Buchanan 
has described; but that in 1827, General Jackson, in the heat 
of the renewed controversies about the supposed bargain be- 
tween Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, took up the erroneous idea 
that Mr. Buchanan could, if he were to declare the truth, make 
it apparent that Mr. Clay or his friends had attempted to effect 
the same kind of bargain with General Jackson, which attempt 
was indignantly repelled. A candid examination of the facts 
is all that is needful to convince any one that the General was 
in error in 1827, and that he was equally in error at a much 
later period. When he became President, and for a long time 
thereafter, his confidence in Mr. Buchanan was manifested in 
so many ways that one is led to believe that his view in 1827 
of Mr. Buchanan's conduct in the matter of the Presidential 
election of 1821-5 was an exceptional idiosyncrasy, resulting 
from the excitement which his mind always felt in regard to 
that event, and which was strongly renewed in him in 1827. 

It will be necessary to advert to this subject again, because, 
when Mr. Buchanan was a candidate for the Presidency in 
1856, the whole story was revived by persons who were un- 
friendly to him, and who then made use of a private letter 
which was extracted from General Jackson in 1845, in a some- 
what artful manner, when he was laboring under a mortal ill- 
ness. But an account of this political intrigue belongs to the 
period when it was set on foot. 



CHAPTER IT. 

1825— 1826. 

BITTER OPPOSITION TO THE ADMINISTRATION OP JOHN QUINCT ADAMS — 
BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF THE REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS — THE 
PANAMA MISSION — INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO SLAVERY. 

THE circumstances attending the election of Mr. Adams led 
to tlie formation of a most powerful opposition to liis 
administration, as soon as he was inaugurated. The friends of 
General Jackson, a numerous and compact body of public men, 
representing a much larger number of the people of the Union 
than the friends of Mr. Adams could be said to represent, felt 
that he had been unfairly deprived of the votes of States in the 
House of Representatives which should have been given to 
him. Especially was this the case, they said, in regard to the 
State of Kentucky, whose Legislature had plainly indicated the 
wish of a majority of her people that her vote in the House 
should be given to General Jackson ; and when it -was, 
announced that Mr, Adams, who had received the unanimous 
electoral vote of only six States, had obtained the votes of 
thirteen States in the House, while General Jackson had 
obtained but seven, and when Mr. Clay had been appointed by 
Mr. Adams Secretary of State, there was a bitterness of feel- 
ing among the supporters of General Jackson, which evinced 
at once a fixed determination to elect him President at the end 
of the ensuing four years. 

In regard to the state of parties, viewed apart from the 
merely personal element of leadership and following, there 
was not much, in the beginning of Mr. Adams's administration, 
to distinguish its supporters from its opponents. In the course, 
however, of that administration, those who defended it from 
the fierce assaults of the opposition, began to take the name of 
^N^ational Eepublicans, while the opponents of the administra- 
tion began to call themselves Democrats. Included in the 



58 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

opposition were the political friends and followers of Mr. Cal- 
houn, and the political friends and followers of General Jack- 
son ; the latter being distinctly known and classified as "Jack- 
son men." In the Senate there was a number of older meu, 
who were not likely to form an active element of parliamentary 
opposition or defence; such as Mr. Silsbee of Massachusetts, 
Mr. Dickerson of New Jersey, Mr. Samuel Smith of Maryland, 
Mr. William Smith of South Carolina, Mr. Macon of Georgia, 
Mr. Rowan of Kentucky, and Mr. Hugh L. "White of Tennes- 
see. The opposition in the Senate was led by a younger class 
of men : Mr. Yan Buren of ISTew York, Mr. Woodbury of New 
Hampshire, Mr. Tazewell of Yirginia, Mr. Hayne of South 
Carolina, Mr. Berrien of Georgia, and Mr. Benton of Missouri.* 
But it was not in the Senate that the great arena of debate 
between the assailants and the defenders of this administration 
was to be found during the first year or two of its term. In 
the House, at the opening of the 19th Congress, wdiich began 
its session in December, 1825, there was an array of combatants 
— ardent, active and able debaters. Of these, composing the 
leaders of the opposition, were Mr. Buchanan, Samuel D. Ing- 
ham, William C. Rives, James K. Polk, John Forsyth, George 
McDuffie, Edward Livingston, William Drayton, William S. 
Archer, Andrew Stevenson, Mangum, Cambreleng, and Louis 
McLane. The eccentric John Randolph was also one of the 
leaders of the opposition. The leading friends of the admin- 
istration were Webster, Sprague, Bartlett, John Davis, Edward 
Everett, Burgess, Taylor, Letcher, Wright, Yinton, and Henry 
L. Storrs. 

Before the opposition had marshalled their forces for an 
attack upon the administration, a debate occurred in the House 
of Representatives upon a subject that did not involve party 
divisions. A bill was introduced by a Pennsylvania member 
for the relief of the surviving ofiicers of the Revolution. It 
proposed an appropriation of only one million of dollars, and it 
was confined strictly to the cases of the Revolutionary officers 
to whom half-pay for life had been granted by Congress in 

* At a little later period, Mr. Webster was transferred from the House to the Senate, 
and became there one of the strongest and most conspicuous of the friends of the adminis- 
tration. 



BILL FOR RELIEF OF REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS. 59 

17S0, "wlio had afterwards accepted a commutation of live years' 
full pay, in lieu of lialf-pay for life, and who were paid in cer- 
tificates that were never worth more than one-fifth of theii' 
nominal value, and which were soon depreciated to about one- 
eighth. The passage of tliis measure depended upon the pru- 
dence and skill of those who favored it. The mover, Mr. 
Hemphill of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Dayton, had advocated the 
hill in speeches of much discretion, and there was a good j^ros- 
j)ect of its adoption^ In this state of things, an untoward 
amendment was offered by a member from Massachusetts, 
which proposed to increase the appropriation. This had a 
manifest tendency to defeat the bill ; and at this crisis Mr. 
Buchanan came forward to restate the case of the officers, and 
to replace the measure on its true footing. He said : 

•'It is with extreme reluctance I rise at this time to address you. I have 
made no preparation to speak, except that of carefully reading the documents 
which have been laid upon our tables ; but a crisis seems to have arrived 
in this debate, when the friends of the bill, if ever, must come forward in its 
support. I do not consider that the claim of the officers of the Revolution 
rests upon gratitude alone. It is not an appeal to your generosity only, but 
to your justice. You owe them a debt, in the strictest sense of the word ; 
and of a nature so meritorious, that, if you shall refuse to pay it, the nation 
will be disgraced. Formerly, when their claim was presented to Congress, 
Ave had, at least, an apology for rejecting it. The country was not then in a 
condition to discharge this debt without inconvenience. But now, after forty 
years have elapsed since its creation, with a treasury overflowing, and a 
national debt so diminished, that, with ordinary economy, it must, in a very 
few years, be discharged, these officers, the relics of that band which achieved 
your independence, again present themselves before you, and again ask you 
for justice. They do not ask you to be generous — they do not ask you to be 
grateful — but they ask you to pay the debt which was the price of your in- 
dependence. I term it a debt ; and it is one founded upon a most solemn 
contract, with which these officers have complied, both in its letter and in 
its spirit, whilst you have violated all its obligations. 

"Let us spend a few moments in tracing the history of this claim. It 
arose out of the distresses of the Continental Army, during the Revolutionary 
War ; and the utter inability of the government, at that time, to relieve them. 
What, sir, was the situation of that army, when it lay encamped at the Val- 
ley Forge ? They were naked, and hungry, and barefoot. Pestilence and 
famine stalked abroad throughout the camp. The first blaze of patriotism 
which had animated the country, and furnished the army with its officers, 
had begun to die away. These officers perceived that the contest would be 



60 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

loug, and bloody, and doubtful. They had felt, by sad experience, that the 
depreciated pay which they received, so far from enabling them to impart 
assistance to their wives and children, or hoard up anything for futurity, was 
not sufficient to supply their own absolute and immediate wants. Placed in 
this situation, they were daily sending in their resignations, and abandoning 
the cause of their country. In this alarming crisis, Washington earnestly 
recommended to Congress to grant the officers half-pay, to commence after 
the close of the contest, as the only remedy for these evils, within their 
power. The country was not then able to remunerate the officers for the 
immense and unequal sacrifices which they were making in its cause. All 
that it could then do was to present them a prospect of happier days to come, 
on which hope might rest. With this view, Congress, in May, 1778, adopted 
a resolution allowing the officers who should continue in service until the 
end of the war, half-pay for seven years. This resolution produced but a 
partial effect upon the army. The time of its continuance was to be but 
short ; and there were conditions annexed to it, which, in many cases, would 
have rendered it entirely inoperative. 

" In August, 1779, Congress again acted upon this subject, and resolved, 
' That it be recommended to the several States to grant half-pay for life to 
the officers who should continue in the service to the end of the war.' This 
recommendation was disregarded by every State in the Union, with one 
exception ; and I feci proud that Pennsylvania was that State. She not only 
granted half-pay for life to the officers of her own line, but she furnished them 
with clothing and with provisions. Thus, when the G-eneral Government 
became unable to discharge its duty to her officers and soldiers, she volun- 
tarily interposed and relieved their distresses. General Washington, when 
urging upon Congress the necessity of granting to the officers half-pay for 
life, pointed to those of the Pennsylvania line as an example of the beneficial 
consequences which had resulted from that measure.* 

" Congress at length became convinced of the necessity of granting to the 
Continental officers half-pay for Ufe. Without pay and without clothing, they 
had become disheartened and were about abandoning the service. The dark- 
est period of the Revolution had arrived, and there was but one ray of hope 
left to penetrate the impending gloom which hung over the army. The offi- 
cers were willing still to endure privations and sufferings, if they could obtain 
an assurance that they would be remembered by their country, after it should 
be blessed with peace and independence. They well knew Congress could 
not reUeve their present wants; all, therefore, they asked was the promise 
of a future provision. Congress, at length, in October, 1780, resolved, ' That 
half-pay for life be granted to the officers in the army of the United States 
who shall continue in service to the end of the war.' 



* Joint Eesolutione of 13th and 24th March, 1779. See Journals, pages a35, 336, 342. 
1 Smith's Laws, 487. Life of Joseph Eeed, President of the Supreme Executive Council 
of Pennsylvania, Vol. II, p. 65. 



BILL FOR RELIEF OF REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS. 61 

" Before the adoption of this resolution, so desperate had been our condi- 
tion, that even Washington apprehended a dissolution of the army, and had 
begun to despair of the success of our cause. We have his authority for de- 
claring that, immediately after its adoption, our prospects brightened and it 
produced the most happy eiFects. The state of the army was instantly 
changed. The officers became satisfied with their condition, and, under their 
command, the army marched to victory and independence. They faithfully 
and patriotically performed every obligation imposed upon them by the sol- 
emn contract into which they had entered with their country. 

"How did you perform this contract on yonr part? No sooner had the 
dangers of war ceased to threaten our existence — no sooner had peace re- 
turned to bless our shores, than we forgot those benefactors to whom, under 
Providence, we owed our independence. We then began to discover that it 
was contrary to the genius of our Republican institutions to grant pensions 
for Ufe. The jealousy of the people was roused, and their fears excited. 
They dreaded the creation of a privileged order. I do not mean to censure 
them for this feehng of ill-directed jealou?y, because jealousy is the natural 
guardian of liberty. 

"In this emergency, how did the Continental officers act? In such a 
manner as no other officers of a victorious army had ever acted before. For 
the purpose of allaying the apprehensions of their fellow-citizens, and com- 
plying with the wishes of Congress, they consented to accept five years' full- 
pay in commutation for their half-pay for life. This commutation was to be 
paid in money, or securities were to be given on interest at six per cent., as 
Congress should find most convenient. 

" Did the government ever perform this their second stipulation to the 
oQicers ? I answer, no. The gentleman from Tennessee was entirely mis- 
taken in the history of the times, when he asserted that the commutation 
certificates of the officers enabled them to purchase farms, or commence trade, 
upon leaving the army. Congress had not any funds to pledge for their re- 
demption. They made requisitions upon the States, which shared the same 
fate with many others, and were entirely disregarded. The faith and the 
honor of the country, whilst they were intrusted to thirteen independent and 
jealous State sovereignties, were almost always forfeited. We then had a 
General Government which had not the power of enforcing its own edicts. 
The consequence was that, Avhen the officers received their certificates, they 
were not worth more than about one-fifth of their nominal value, and they 
very soon fell to one-eighth of that amount. 

'• Let gentlemen for a moment realize what must then have been the situa- 
tion and the feelings of these officers. They had spent their best days in the 
service of their country. They had endured hardships and privations without 
an example in history. Destitute of everything but patriotism, they had lived 
for years upon the mere promise of Congress. At the call of their country, 
tliey had relinquished half-pay for life, and accepted a new promise of five 
years' full-pay. When they had confidently expected to receive this recom- 



C2 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

pense, it vanished from their grasp. Instead of money, or securities equal to 
money, which would have enabled them to embark with advantage in civil 
employments, they obtained certificates which necessity compelled most of 
them to sell at the rate of eight for one. The government proved faithless, but 
they had, what we have not, the plea of necessity, to justify their conduct. 

" In 1790, the provision which was made by law for the payment of the 
public debt, embraced these commutation certificates. They were funded, 
and the owner of each of them received three certificates; the first for two- 
thirds of the original amount, bearing an interest immediately of six per cent. ; 
the second for the remaining "third, but without interest for ten years; and 
the third for the interest which had accumulated, bearing an interest of only 
three per cent. 

" What does this bill propose ? Not to indemnify the officers of the Revo- 
lution for the loss which they sustained in consequence of the inability of the 
government, at the close of the war, to comply with its solemn contract. Not, 
after a lapse of more than forty years, to place them in the situation in which 
they would have been placed had the government been able to do them jus- 
tice. It proposes to allow them even less than the difference between 
what the owners of the commutation certificates received under the funding 
system, and what these certificates when funded were worth upon their face. 
My colleague has clearly shown, by a fair calculation, that the allowance will 
fall considerably short of this difference. If the question now before the 
committee were to be decided by the people of the United States instead of 
their Representatives, could any man, for a moment, doubt what would be 
their determination ? 

" I hope my friend from Massachusetts will not urge the amendment he 
has proposed. Judging from past experience, I fear, if it should prevail, the 
bill will be defeated. Let other classes of persons who think themselves 
entitled to the bounty of their country present their claims to this House, and 
they will be fairly investigated. This is what the surviving officers of the Revo- 
lution have done. Their case has been thoroughly examined by a committee, 
who have reported in its favor ; and all the information necessary to enable 
us to decide correctly is now in our possession. I trust their claim will be 
permitted to rest upon its own foundation. They are old, and for the most 
part in poverty ; it is necessary, if we act at all, that we act speedily, and 
do them justice without delay. In my opinion, they have a better claim to 
what this bill contemplates giving them, than any of us have to our eight 
dollars per day. Gentlemen need apprehend no danger from the precedent ; 
we shall never have another Revolutionary war for independence. We have 
no reason to apprehend we shall ever again be unable to pay our just debts. 
Even if that should again be our unfortunate condition, we shall never have 
another army so patient and so devoted as to sacrifice every selfish considera- 
tion for the glory, the happiness, and the independence of their country. I 
shall vote against the proposed amendment because I will do no act which 
may have a tendency to defeat this bill." 



BILL FOR RELIEF OF REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS. 63 

Mr. Buchanan used to relate, in after years, that at this junc- 
ture, the friends of the bill were dismayed by the course of Mr. 
Everett, who was then a young member from Massachusetts, 
and who wished to make and insisted upon making a rhetori- 
cal speech. The friends of the bill remonstrated with him, that 
all had been said that needed to be said ; and that the only 
thino- to be done w^as to vote down the amendment, after which 
the bill was almost certain to be passed. But Mr. Everett per- 
sisted, and made his speech while the amendment was pending.* 
He " demanded " of the House to pass the bill, and by passing it 
as proposed to be amended by his colleague to give the sur- 
vivors of the Revolution " all they ask and more than they 
ask." The consequence was that the appropriation was in- 
creased. Then a member from New York moved to extend its 
provisions to every militia-man who had served for a certain 
time. Then other amendments embraced widows and orphans, 
artificers and musicians, the troops who fought at Bunker Hill, 
the troops raised in Vermont, those of the battles of Saratoga 
and Bennington, and of the Southern battles. The enemies of 
the original measure promoted this method of dealing with it, 
and finally, when thus loaded down with provisions not at all 
germane to its real principle, it was recommitted to the Com- 
mittee and was therefore lost. 

The first important subject of contention on which the oppo- 



* The peroration of Mr. Everett's speech was as follows : 

" The present year completes the half century since the Declaration of Independence ; 
and most devoutly do I hope, that, when the silver trumpet of our political jubilee sounds, 
it may be with a note of comfort and joy to the withered heart of the war-worn veteran of 
the Revolution. Our tardy provision will, indeed, come too late to help him throngh the 
hard journey of life ; it will not come too late to alleviate the sorrows of age, and smooth 
the pillow of decline. It is the fiftieth year of oar Independence. How much shall we read, 
how much shall we hear, how much, perhaps, we shall say this year, about the glorious 
exploits of our fathers, and the debt of gratitude we owe them. I do not wish this to be all 
talk. I want to do something. I want a substantial tribute to be paid them. Praise is 
sweet music, both to old and young ; but Ihonestly confess that my mind relucts and re- 
volts, by anticipation, at the thought of the compliments with which we are going to fill the 
ears of these poor veterans, while we leave their pockets empty, and their backs cold. If 
we cast out this bill, I do hope that some member of this House, possessing an influence to 
which I cannot aspire, will introduce another, to make it penal to say a word on the fourth 
of July, about the debt of gratitude which we owe to the heroes of the Revolution. Let the 
day and the topic pass in decent silence. I hate all gag-laws ; but there is one thing I am 
willing to gag — the vaporing tongue of a bankrupt, who has gronoi rich, and talks sentiment, 
about the obligation he feels to his needy creditor, whom he paid off at 2s. 6d. in the 
pound." 



64 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sition put forth their strength against the administration of Mr. 
Adams related to what was called " The Panama Mission." In 
his Message of December, 1825, the President made the follow- 
ing announcement : 

" Among the measures which have been suggested to the Spanish- 
American Republics by the new relations with one another resulting from the 
recent changes of their condition, is that of assembling at the Isthmus of 
Panama, a Congress at which each of them should be represented, to dehb- 
erate upon objects important to the welfare of all. The republics of Colom- 
bia, of Mexico, and of Central America, have already deputed plenipotentia- 
ries to such a meeting, and they have invited the United States to be also 
represented there by their ministers. The invitation has been accepted, and 
ministers on the part of the United States will be commissioned to attend at 
those deliberations, and to take part in them, so far as may be compatible 
with that neutrality from which it is neither our intention nor the desire of 
the other American States that we should depart." 

It was, beyond controversy, the constitutional prerogative of 
the President, as the organ of all intercourse with foreign 
nations, to accept this invitation, and to name Ministers to the 
proposed Congress. The Senate might or might not concur 
with him in this step, and might or might not confirm the nom- 
inations of the proposed Ministers. He sent to the Senate the 
names of John Sergeant of Pliiladelphia, and Richard C. An- 
derson of Kentucky, as the Ministers of the United States to the 
proposed Congress at Panama. The Senatorial opposition, led 
by Mr. Benton and Mr. Tazewell, after a long discussion in 
secret session, took a vote upon a resolution that it was inex- 
pedient to send Ministers to Panama. This was rejected by a 
vote of 24 to 19 ; and the nominations were then confirmed by 
a vote of 27 to 17 in the case of Mr. Anderson, and by a vote 
of 2G to 18 in the case of Mr. Sergeant. The diplomatic de- 
partment having thus fully acted upon and confirmed the pro- 
posed measure, it remained for the House of Eepresentatives to 
initiate and pass the necessary appropriation. The turn that 
was given to the subject in the House gave rise to an animated 
debate on a veiy important constitutional topic, in which Mr. 
Buchanan, although opposed to the Mission, asserted it to be the 
duty of the House to make the appropriation, now that the 
Senate had confirmed the appointment of the Ministers. This 



THE PANAMA MISSION. G5 

debate began upon a resolution reported by the Committee on 
Foreign Aftairs, that " in the opinion of the House it is expedi- 
ent to appropriate the funds necessary to enable the President 
of the United States to send Ministers to the Cono;ress of Pan- 
ama." To this resolution, Mr. McLane of Delaware had moved 
an amendment, which, if it had been adopted, would have 
placed the House of Representatives in the anomalous attitude 
of annexing, as a condition of its grant, instructions as to the 
mode in whicli the diplomatic agents of the United States were 
to act in carrying out a foreign mission. Mr. Buchanan, who 
was in favor of the amendments, was also in favor of making 
the appropriation necessary to enable the President to send 
the Mission ; and in support of this constitutional duty of the 
House, he made an argument on the 11th of April (1826) which 
drew from Mr. Webster the comj)liment that he had placed 
this part of the subject in a point of view which could not be 
improved.* Mr. Buchanan said ; 

" I know there are several gentlemen on this floor, who approve of the 
policy of the amendments proposed, and Avish to express an opinion in their 
favor; and who yet feel reluctant to vote fox them, because it is their inten- 
tion finally to support the appropriation bill. They think, if the amendments 
should be rejected, consistency would require them to refuse any grant of 
money to carry this mission into effect. I shall, therefore, ask the attention 
of the committee, whilst I endeavor to prove that there would not, in any 
event, be the slightest inconsistency in this course. 

"I assert it to be a position susceptible of the clearest proof, that the 
House of Representatives is morally bound, unless in extreme cases, to vote 
the salaries of Ministers who have been constitutionally created by the Presi- 
dent and Senate. The expediency of establishing the mission was one ques- 
tion, which has already been decided by the competent authority ; when the 
appropriation bill shall come before us, we will be called upon to decide 
another and a very different question. Richard C. Anderson and John Ser- 



*In the course of his speech on the 14th of April, Mr. Webster said: "The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania, with whom I have great pleasure in concurring on this part of the case, 
while I regret that I differ witli him on others, has placed this question in a point of view 
which can not he improved. These oiHcers do indeed already exist. They are public minis- 
ters. If they were to negotiate a treaty, and the Senate should ratify it, it would become a 
law of the land, whether we voted their salaries or not. This shows that the Constitution 
never contemplated that the House of Representatives should act a part in originating ne- 
gotiations or concluding treaties." Mr. Webster made farther observations, in coniirmation 
of the views expressed by Jlr. Buchanan on the duty of making the appropriation. (Works 
of Daniel Webster, Vol. Ill, p. 181.) 
I.— 5 



QQ LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

geant have been regularly nominated by the President of United States to 
be Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary ' to the Assembly of 
American nations at Panama.' The Senate, after long and solemn delibera- 
tion, have advised and consented to their appointment. These Ministers have 
been created — they have been called into existence under the authority of the 
Constitution of the United States. Tliat venerated instrument declares, that 
the President ' shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the 
Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur : 
and he shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Sen- 
ate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges 
of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose 
appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be estab- 
lished by Law.' What, then, will bo the question upon the appropriation 
bill ? In order to enable our Ministers to proceed upon their mission, the 
President has asked us to grant the necessary appropriation. Shall we incur 
the responsibility of refusing ? Shall we thus defeat the mission which has 
already been established by the only competent constitutional authorities ? 
This House has, without doubt, the physical power to refuse the appropria- 
tion, and it possesses the same power to withhold his salary from the Presi- 
dent of the United States. The true question is, what is the nature of our 
constitutional obligation? Are Ave not morally bound to pay the salaries 
given by existing laws to every officer of the Government ? By the act of the 
first May, 1810, the outfit and salary to be allowed by the President to For- 
eign Ministers are estabUshed. Such Ministers have been regularly appointed 
to attend the Congress at Panama. What right then have we to refuse to 
appropriate the salaries which they have a right to receive, under the existing 
laws of the land ? 

"I admit there maybe extreme cases, in Avhich this House would be justi- 
fied in withholding such an appropriation. ' The safety of the people is the 
supreme law.' If, therefore, we should believe any mission to be dangerous, 
either to the existence or to the liberties of this country, necessity would 
justify us in breaking the letter to preserve the spirit of the Constitution. 
The same necessity would equally justify us in refusing to grant to the Presi- 
dent his salary, in certain extreme cases, which might easily be imagined. 

'• But how far would your utmost power extend ? Can you re-judge the 
determination of the President and Senate, and destroy the officers which 
they have created ? Might not the President immediately send these Minis- 
ters to Panama; and, if he did, would not their acts be valid ? It is certain, 
if they should go, they run the risk of never receiving a salary ; but still they 
might act as Plenipotentiaries. By withholding the salary of the President, 
you cannot withhold from him the power ; neither can you, by refusing to 
appropriate for this mission, deprive the Ministers of their authority. It is 
beyond your control to make them cease to be Ministers. 

"The constitutional obligation to provide for a Minister, is equally strong 
as that to carry into effiict a treaty. It is true, the evils which may flow 



THE PANAMA MISSION. 67 

from your refusal may be greater ia the one case than the other. If you 
refuse to appropriate for a treaty, you violate the faith of the country to a 
foreign nation. You do no more, however, than omit to provide for the exe- 
cution of an instrument whicli is declared by the Constitution to be the 
supreme law of the land. In the case which Avill be presented to you by the 
appropriation bill, is the nature of your obligation different ? I think not. 
The power to create the Minister is contained in the same clause of the Con- 
stitution with that to make the treaty. They are powers of the same nature. 
The one is absolutely necessary to carry the other into effect. You cannot 
negotiate treaties without Ministers. They are the means by which the 
treaty-making power is brought into action. You are, therefore, under the 
same moral obligation to appropriate money to discharge tlie salary of a 
Minister, that you would be to carry a treaty into effect. 

"If you ask me for authority to estabUsh these principles, I can refer you 
to the opinion of the first President of the United States— the immortal 
Father of his Country — who, in my humble judgment, possessed more prac- 
tical wisdom, more political foresight, and more useful constitutional knowl- 
edge, than all his successors. 

"I have thus, I think, established the position, that gentlemen who vote 
for the amendments now before the committee, even if they should not 
prevail, may, without inconsistency, give their support to the appropriation 
bill." 

Sound as this was, it is a little remarkable that Mr. Buchanan 
should not have considered that the duty of voting the neces- 
sary appropriation precluded the House of Representatives from 
dictating what subjects the Ministers were to discuss or not to 
discuss. Those who favored the proposed amendments founded 
themselves on the legal maxim that he who has the power to 
give may annex to the gift whatever condition he chooses. 
This was well answered by Mr. AYebster, that in making appro- 
priations for such purposes the House did not make gifts, but 
performed a duty. The amendments were rejected on the 21st 
of April, and on the following day the Panama Appropriation 
Bill was passed, Mr. Buchanan voting with the majority." 

Some of the topics incidentally touched upon in the discur- 

* The subsequent fate of this measure can be related very briefly. Mr. Anderson died 
at Carthagena, on his way to the isthmus of Panama. The " Congress " adjourned to meet 
at Tacuboya, a village near the city of Mexico. Mr. Poinsett was appointed in the place of 
Mr. Anderson, and Mr. Sargoant sailed for Vera Cruz on the 2d of December, 1826. He 
arrived in Mexico in January, 1827, and found a few fragments of the "Congress " floating 
about, without action or organization. Bolivar, who was supposed to have originated the 
project, had changed his miiul. Mr. Sargeant remained for six months in Mexico, and in 
the summer of 1837 returned home. 



G8 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sive debate on this Panama Mission are of little interest now. 
But one may be referred to, because it related to the dangerous 
topic of slavery. An apprehension was felt by those who were 
opposed to this measure, and by Mr. Buchanan, among others, 
that the Spanish-American Republics, more particularly Mexico 
and Colombia, might concert measures at this proposed Congress 
to seize the West India Islands, and raise there the standard of ' 
emancipation and social revolution. Those who entertained 
this apprehension, therefore, did not wish to see the moral and 
political influence of this proposed Congress increased by the 
participation of the United States in its proceedings. It may 
have been an unfounded fear ; but in truth, excepting in so far 
as the objects of this assembly were understood and explained 
by the American Administration itself, very little was known 
of the purposes entertained by its original projectors. It was 
certainly not unnatural, in the then condition of our own coun- 
try, and of the West Indies, in regard to the matter of slavery, 
that public men in the United States should have been cautious 
in regard to this exciting topic. At all events, it was intro- 
duced incidentally, in the discussion on the proposed Mission, 
and Mr. Buchanan thus expressed himself upon it : 

"Permit me here, for a moment, to speak upon a subject to -which I have 
never before adverted upon this floor, and to wljich, I trust, I may never 
again have occasion to advert. I mean the subject of slavery. I beheve it 
to be a great poHtical and a great moral evil. I thank God, my lot has been 
cast in a State where it does not exist. But, while I entertain these opinions, 
I know it is an evil at present without a remedy. It has been a curse 
entailed upon us by that nation which now makes it a subject of reproach to 
our institutions. It is, however, one of those moral evils, from which it is 
impossible for us to escape, without the introduction of evils infinitely greater. 
There are portions of this Union, in which, if you emancipate your slaves, 
they will become masters. There can be no middle course. Is there any 
man in this Union who could, for a moment, indulge in the horrible idea of 
abolishing slavery by the massacre of the high-minded, and the chivalrous 
race of men in the South. I trust there is not one. For my own part I 
would, without hesitation, buckle on my knapsack, and march in company 
with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Everett) in defence of their cause." * 

* This allusion to Mr. Everett requires some explanation. On the 9th of March, 1826, 
he made a speech on the proposed Constitutional Amendment, in the rourse of which he 
said : 

" I am not one of those citizens of the North who tliink it immoral and irreligious 



INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO SLAVERY. 09 

to join in putting down a servile insurrection at the South. I am no soldier, my habits 
and education are very un-military ; but there is no cause in which I would sooner buckle 
a knapsack to my back, and put a musket on my shoulder, than that. I would cede the 
whole continent to any one who would take it — to England, to France, to Spain ; I would 
see it sunk in the bottom of the ocean, before I would see any part of this fair America con- 
verted into a Continental Hayti, by that awful process of bloodshed and desolation, by which 
alone such a catastrophe could be brought on. The great relation of servitude, in some form 
or other, with greater or less departures from the theoretic equality of man, is inseparable 
from our nature. I know no way by which the form of this servitude shall be fixed, but by 
political institution. Domestic slavery, though, I confess, not that form of servitude which 
seems to be most beneficial to the master— certainly not that which is most beneficial to the 
servant— is not, in my judgment, to be set down as an immoral and irreligious relation. I 
cannot admit that Religion has but one voice to the slave, and that this voice is, 'Rise 
against your master.' No, Sir, the New Testament sa}'s, ' Slaves obey your masters,' and 
though I know full well that, in the benignant operations of Christianity, which gathered 
master and slave around the same communion table, this unfortunate institution disappeared 
in Europe, yet I cannot admit that, while it subsists, and where it subsists, its duties are not 
pre-supposed and sanctioned by religion. I certainly am not called upon to meet the charges 
brought against this institution, yet truth obliges mo to say a word more on the subject. I 
know the condition of the working classes in other countries, and I have no hesitation in say- 
ing that I believe the slaves of this country are better clothed and fed, and less hardly 
worked, than the peasantry of some of the most prosperous States of the continent of 
Europe." 



CHAPTER V. 

1827— 1829. 

GKEAT ENCEE.ASE OF GENER/VL JACKSON's POPULARITY — "RETRENCH- 
MENT " MADE A POLITICAL CRT — DEBATE ON THE TARIFF — BU- 
CHANAN ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS — THE INTERESTS OF NAYIGA- 
TION— THE CUMBERLAND ROAD AGAIN DISCUSSED — INELIGIBILITY OF 
A PRESIDENT. 

THE 20th Congress, wliicli assembled in December, 1827, 
opened Avith a great increase in the forces of the opposi- 
tion. The elections in the autumn of 1826 evinced an extraor- 
dinary growth of General Jackson's popularity. Mr. Adams 
found himself in a minority in both branches of Congress. In 
the House, the opponents of his administration numbered 111 
members, its friends 91. It is quite probable, however, that 
but for the indiscretion of certain members Avho have ranked as 
friends of the administration, the angry and criminating discus- 
sion of the subject of '' retrenchment," which was deprecated 
by the wisest men of the opposition, but into which they were 
forced, would not have occurred. It was precipitated by the 
defiant attitude of two or three members who should have 
allowed the cool leaders of the opposition to strangle it, as they 
were at first disposed to do. But once commenced, it drew into 
bitter strife the excited elements of party and personal warfare, 
and went on through nearly a whole session with little credit 
to some who participated in it, but in the end to the great and 
not altogether just damage of the administration. 

It happened that on the 22d of January (1828) a member 
from Kentucky, Mr. Chilton, an earnest " Jackson man," who 
had formerly been a clergyman but was now a politician, intro- 
duced in the House certain resolutions instructing the Commit- 
tee of Ways and Means to report what ofiices could be abolished, 
what salaries reduced, and other modes of curtailing the ex- 
penses of the government. It is apparent that this could not have 



INCREASE OF GEN. JACKSON'S POPULARITY. 71 

been a step taken by concert with the leaders of the opposition. 
A party that was daily growing in strength, and that was almost 
morally certain to overthrow the party of the administration, and 
to elect the next President, conld have had no motive for shack- 
ling themselves with a legislative measure reducing the number 
of offices or the salaries of the officers that must be retained. 
They could not know in advance how they could carry on the 
government, and it would l)e mere folly for them to put laws on 
the statute-book framed while they were not charged with the 
duties of administration, and suggested only as a topic for ex- 
citing popular discontent against those who were responsible 
neither for the existing number of offices nor for the salaries 
paid to them, " Retrenchment," as a popular cry, was not a 
movement which the leading men of the opposition in the 
House of Representatives either needed or desired to initiate. 
Mr. McDuffie, the chairman of the Committee of Ways and 
Means, and a vehement opponent of the administration, objected 
to Mr. Chilton's resolutions at the outset. So did Mr. Bu- 
chanan ; and the latter often said, in subsequent years, that 
they would have been crushed out of all consideration, if the 
friends of the administration had left them in the hands of its 
opponents. They were moved by an inconsiderable member, 
who was one of the stragglers of the opposition forces, and they 
were met by administration members who were about equally 
inconsiderable, in a tone of challenge and defiance. In vain 
did Mr. McDuffie and Mr. Buchanan contend that the present 
was no time to discuss the expenditures of the government. In 
vain did the most considerable and important friends of the 
administration deprecate an unprofitable, intolerant, and useless 
debate. The mover of the resolutions would not be silenced, 
and the few indiscreet supporters of the administration, who 
demanded that their discussion should go on, would not permit 
them to receive their proper quietus by the application of '' the 
previous question." 'Never was a deliberative body drawn, in 
spite of the unwillingness of its best members on both sides, 
into a more unseemly and profitless discussion. 

Among the friends of General Jackson M'ho deprecated and 
endeavored to put a stop to this discussion was Mr. Edward 
Livingston of Louisiana, the oldest member of the House, and 



72 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

a person of great distinction. He made an earnest appeal to the 
House to end the whole matter by referring the resolutions to a 
committee without further debate. This was not acceded to by 
the friends of the administration, wlio wished to continue the 
discussion. Mr. Edward Everett, then a young member from 
Massachusetts, moved an adjournment after Mr. Livino'ston's 
effort to terminate the whole discussion, in order to make a 
speech, which he delivered on the 1st of February. Mr. Bu- 
chanan said in reply to him : " This debate would have ended 
on Thursday last, after the solemn appeal for that purpose, 
which was made to the House by the venerable gentleman from 
Louisiana, had not the gentleman from Massachusetts himself 
prevented it by moving an adjonrnment. That gentleman 
ouglit to know that he can never throw himself into any debate 
without giving it fresh vigor and importance." 

In the course of this speech, Mr. Buchanan made some allu- 
sion to the alleged " bargain and corruption " by which Mr. 
Adams had been made President; and he thus touched upon 
the only important consideration that could be said to belong 
to the circumstances of that election : 



" Before, however, I commence my rej^ly to that gentleman, I beg leave 
to make a few observations on the last Presidential election. I shall purposely 
pass over every charge which has been made, that it was accomplished by 
bargain and sale or by actual corruption. If that were the case, I have no 
knowledge of the fact, and shall therefore say nothing about it. I shall argue 
this question as though no such charges had ever been made. So far as it 
regards the conduct which the people of the United States ought to pursue, 
at the approaching election, I agree entirely with the eloquent gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Randolph] (I cannot with propriety call him my friend), that 
it can make no difference whether a bargain existed or not. Nay, in some 
aspects in which the subject may be viewed, the danger to the people would 
be the greater, if no corruption had existed. It is true, that this circumstance 
ought greatly to influence our individual opinions of the men who now wield 
the destinies of the Republic ; but yet the precedent would be at least equally 
dangerous in the one case as in the other. If flagrant and gross corruption 
had existed, every honest man w(3uld start from it with instinctive horror, and 
the people would indignantly hurl those men from the seats of power, who 
had thus betrayed their dearest interests. If the election were pure, there is, 
therefore, the greater danger in the precedent. I believe, in my soul, that 
the precedent which was established at the last Presidential election, ought 



" RETREXCHMENT " MADE A POLITICAL CRY. 73 

to be reversed by the people, and this is one of my principal reasons for 
opposing the re-election of the present Chief Magistrate. 

" Let us examine this subject more closely. General Jackson was returned 
by the people of this country to the House of Representatives, with a plu- 
rality of electoral votes. The distinguished individual who is now the Secre- 
tary of State, was then the Speaker of this House. It is perfectly well known, 
that, without his vote and influence, Mr. Adams could not have been elected 
President. After the election, we beheld that distinguished iadividual, and 
no man in the United States witnessed the spectacle with more regret than I 
did, descending — yes, Sir, I say descending — from the elevated station which 
you now occupy, into the cabinet of the President whom he had elected. 

" 'Quantum mutatus ab iUo.' 

" In the midnight of danger, during the darkest period of the late war, 
'his thrilling trump had cheered the land.' Although among the great men 
of that day there was no acknowledged leader upon this floor, yet I have 
been informed, upon the best authority, that he was ' primus inter pares.' I 
did wish, at a future time, to see him elevated still higher. I am one of the 
last men in the country who could triumph over his fallen fortunes. Should 
he ever return to what I believe to be correct political principles, I shall will- 
ingly fight in the same ranks with him as a companion — nay, after a short 
probation, I should willingly acbiowledge him as a leader. What brilUant 
prospects has that man not sacrificed ! 

" This precedent, should it be confirmed by the people at the next election, 
will be one of most dangerous character to the Republic. The election of 
President must, I fear, often devolve upon tliis House. We have but little 
reason to expect that any amendment, in relation to this subject, will be made 
to the Constitution in our day. There are so many conflicting interests to 
reconcile, so many powers to balance, that, when we consider the large 
majority in each branch of Congress, and the still larger majority of States, 
required to amend the Constitution, the prospect of any change is almost 
hopeless. I believe it will long remain just as it is. What an example, then, 
will this precedent, in the pure age of the Republic, present to future times ! 
The people owe it to themselves, if the election must devolve upon this 
House, never to sanction the principle that one of its members may accept, 
from the person whom he has elected, any high office, much less the highest 
in his gift. Such a principle, if once established, must, in the end, destroy 
the purity of this House, and convert it into a corrupt electoral vote. If the 
individual to whom I have alluded, could elect a President and receive from 
him the office of Secretary of State from the purest motives, other men may, 
and hereafter will, pursue the same policy from the most corrupt. ' If they 
do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? ' 

" This precedent will become a cover under which future bargains and 
corrupt combinations will be sanctioned, under which the spirit of the Con- 
stitution will be sacrificed to its letter." 



74 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

It is not needful to describe the topics of this discussion. 
Mr. Chilton's resolutions, ufter being somewhat amended, were 
sent to a Select Committee on lletrenchment. The result 
was a majority and a minority report, of which six thousand 
copies were printed and circulated through the country. I turn 
from this subject to matters of more importance. 

Mr. Buchanan's position in this Congress required him to 
exert his powers as a debater more than ever before. The 
House of Representatives was at this time a body in which real 
debate was carried on upon some subjects, however the discus- 
sion on " retrenchment " may be characterized. Its discussions 
on the tariff, commencing on the 4-th of March and terminating 
on the 15th of May, were conducted with great ability. Among 
the best speeches on the tariff bill of this session, there is one 
by Mr. Peleg Sprague of Maine, and one by Mr. Buchanan. 
Both exhibit a great deal of research. Mr. Buchanan's speech, 
begun in Committee of the Whole on the 2d of April, in 
answer to Mr. Sprague, is an excellent specimen of business 
debate. The details on which these two gentlemen differed, 
and on which the debate between them and others chiefly 
turned, are of little interest now ; nor does any tariff debate 
afford much development of permanent principles. So varying 
are the circumstances which from time to time give rise to an 
application of the doctrines that are indicated by the terms 
" free-trade " and " protection." Still there may be found in 
this tariff speech of Mr. Buchanan, matter Mhich is of some in- 
terest in his personal history as an American statesman, because 
it shows that he had now risen to the rank of a statesman, and 
because it gives his general views of what had at this time 
become known as '' the American System." 

Mr. Buchanan, on this occasion, felt that he was combating 
a disposition to favor certain interests at the expense of others. 
In the debate on the tariff of 1824, when Mr. Clay developed 
his views on the subject of protection, and Mr. Webster found 
fault with the details of a measure which he said could not be 
properly characterized as an American System, Mr. Buchanan 
had shown that while he was ready to accede to a tariff for the 
incidental protection of our own manufactures, he was not dis- 
posed to carry the doctrines of protection so far as to injure the 



DEBATE ON THE TARIFF. 75 

agricultural classes ; but that in imposing the duties necessary 
to defray the expenses of the government, he should take care 
to benefit indirectly both the manufacturing and the producing 
interests. In 1828 the proposed alterations of the tariff aimed 
at a more uniform operation of the customs duties upon all the 
great interests of the country. A motion made by Mi". Sprague, 
to strike from the bill an additional duty of five cents per gallon 
on molasses, and twenty-five dollars per ton on hemp, led to a 
discussion on the navigating interests, as aflfected by such an 
amendment, and the whole subject of what was meant by 
protection and " the American system " came up afresh. The 
following extracts from Mr. Buchanan's speech afford fair speci- 
mens of his manner of dealing with this subject : 

I shall cheerfully submit to the public judgment whether the bill, although 
I dislike the minimum principle which it contains, does not afford sufficient 
protection to the manufacturers of woolens. I think it does ; but I wish to 
be distinctly understood, in relation to myself, that I always stand ready, in 
a fair spirit, to do everything in my power to promote the passage of a just 
and judicious tariff, which shall be adequate for their protection ; and that, 
for the sake of conciliation, and to effect this purpose, I am willing to sacrifice 
individual opinion to a considerable extent. 

AVhat, Sir, is the American System ? Is it the system advocated by the 
gentleman from Maine, which would build up one species of domestic industry 
at the expense of all the rest, which would establish a prohibition and conse- 
quent monopoly in favor of the woolen manufacturer whilst it denied all pro- 
tection to the farmer? Certainly not. The American System consists in 
affording equal and just legislative protection to all the great interests of the 
country. It is no respecter of persons. It does not distinguish between the 
farmer who plows the soil in Pennsylvania and the manufacturer of wool in New 
England. Being impartial, it embraces all. There is, in one respect, a strik- 
ing difference between the farmer, the mercliant, and the manufacturer. The 
farmer eating the bread of toil, but of independence, scarcely ever complains. 
If he suffers, he suffers in silence ; you rarely hear him, upon this floor, askmg 
redress for his grievances. He relies with that confidence Avhich belongs to 
his character upon the justice of his country, and does not come here with 
importunate demands. The case is different in regard to the manufacturer 
and the merchant. When they feel themselves aggrieved— when they re- 
quire the aid of your legislation, then complaints ring throughout the country, 
from Georgia to Maine. They never cease to ask, until they obtain. And shall 
this contented and uncomplaining disposition of the great agricultural interest, 
be used as an argument upon this floor against affording it relief? I trust 
not. 



TG LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The gentleman from Maine lias shown himself to be a true disciple of the 
Harrisburg Convention School. Even that convention, although the chief 
objects of their regard appeared to be wool and woolens, recommended fur- 
ther protection to iron, hemp, flax, and the articles manufactured from them 
and to domestic distUled spirits. The gentleman from Maine has moved to 
strike from the bill additional duties which it proposes upon the importation 
of foreign hemp and molasses; and in his speech, he has argued against any 
additional duties either upon iron, or steel, or flax, or foreign spirits. In his 
opinion, therefore, the American System can embrace no other interest 
except that of the growers and manufacturers of wool. 

[Here Mr. Sprague explained, lie said his observations upon the other 
items, besides those he had moved to strike from the bill, were only intended 
to illustrate what would be their effect on the navigating interest.] 

Mr. Buchanan resumed. I perceive, from the gentleman's explanation, I 
did not misunderstand his argument. If this be the American System, I 
should like to know it as soon as possible ; for then I shall be opposed to it. 
I venture to assert that, if those with whom the gentleman from Maine usually 
acts upon this floor have embraced the opinions which he has avowed, it is a 
vain, a culpable waste of time to proceed further with this discussion. Let 
the bill at once go to the tomb of all the Capulets. If the New England 
manufacturer must be protected, whilst the Pennsylvania farmer is aban- 
doned — if this be the American System, instead of being a mourner at its 
funeral, I shall rejoice that it has met the fate which it deserved, and has 
been consigned to an early grave. 

The Legislature of Pennsylvania has given us what, in my opinion, is the 
correct version of the American System. They have declared that " the best 
interests of our country demand that every possible exertion should be made 
to procure the passage of an act of Congress imposing such duties as will 
enable our manufacturers to enter into fair competition with foreign manu- 
facturers, and protect the farmer, the growers of hemp and wool, and the dis- 
tiller of spirits from domestic materials, against foreign competition. The 
people of Pennsylvania do not ask for such a tariff as would secure to any 
one class, or to any section of the country, a monopoly. They want a system 
of protection which will extend its blessings, as well as its burdens, as equally 
as possible over every part of the Union ; to be uniform in its operation upon 
the rich as well as the poor." They have therefore instructed their Senators, 
and requested their Representatives, " to procure, if practicable, the establish- 
ment of such a tariff as will afford additional protection to our domestic man- 
ufactures, especially of woolen and fine cotton goods, glass, and such other 
articles as, in their opinion, require the attention of Congress, so as to enable 
our citizens fairly to compete with foreign enterprise, capital, and experience, 
and give encouragement to the citizens of the grain-growing States, by laying 
an additional duty upon the importation of foreign spirits, flax, china ware, 
hemp, wool, and bar iron." 



DEBATE ON THE TARIFF. 77 

This resolution rpeaks a language which I am proud to hear from the 
Legislature of my native State. 

If it be the disposition of a majority of the members of this committee to 
strike out of the bill iron, hemp, foreign spirits and molasses, no Representa- 
tive from the State of Pennsylvania, who regards either the interest or the 
wishes of his constituents, will dare to vote for what would then remain. 
The time has forever past when such a measure could have received our sanc- 
tion. We shall have no more exclusive tariffs for the benefit of any one por- 
tion of the Union. The tariff of 1824 partook much of this character ; it 
contained no additional duty on foreign spirits or molasses, and only added 
five dollars per ton to the duty on foreign hemp. So far as the grain-growing 
States expected to derive peculiar benefits from that measure, they have 
been, in a great degree, disappointed. 

What was the course which gentlemen pursued in relation to the woolen 
bill of the last session ? I endeavored to introduce into it a small protection 
for our hemp and domestic spirits. We were then told that my attempt 
would endanger the fate of the bill ; that the period of the session was too 
late to introduce amendments ; and that if Ave would then extend protection 
to the manufacturers of wool, a similar protection should, at a future time, be 
extended to the agricultural interest of the grain-growing States. ^My re- 
spectable colleague [Mr. Forward] has informed the committee that he voted 
for the bill of the last session under that delusion. How sadly the picture is 
now reversed ! When an interest in New England, which has been estimated 
at 40,000,000 of dollars, is at stake, and is now about to sink, as has been 
alleged, for want of adequate protection, it seems that gentlemen from that 
portion of the Union would rather consi.c;n it to inevitable destruction than 
yield the protection which the present bill will afford to the productions of 
the Middle and Western States. If they are prepared to act upon a policy 
so selfish, let them at once declare it, and not waste weeks upon a bill which 
can never become a law. 

The gentleman from Maine endeavored to sustain his motives by attempt- 
ing to prove that, if the duties proposed by the bill should be imposed upon 
hemp and molasses, it would injure, nay, probably destroy the navigation of 
the couiitry. Indeed he pronounced its epitaph. It is gone 1 Five cents 
per gallon upon molasses, and twenty-five dollars per ton upon hemp will 
sink our navigating interest ; will sweep our vessels from the ocean 1 When 
I compare the storm of eloquence and of argument which the gentleman has 
employed to strike out hemp and molasses from this bill, with the object to be 
attained, he reminded me — 

" Of ocean into tempest tost 
To waft a feather or to drown a fly." 

An additional duty of five cents per gallon on molasses and twenty-five dol- 
lars per ton upon hemp will consign the navigation of the country to inevitable 
and almost immediate destruction! This is the kind of argument which the 
gentleman has thought proper to address to the committee. 



78 . LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The gentleman from Maine has said that our navigation goes abroad un- 
protected to struggle against the world ; and he has expatiated at length 
upon this part of the subject. I trust I shall be able to prove, without fatigu- 
ing the committee, that no interest belonging to this or any other country 
ever received a more continued or a more efficient protection than the navi- 
gation of the United States. I heartily approve this policy. I would not 
if I could, withdraw from it an atom of the protection which it now enjoys. 
I shall never attempt to array the great and leading interests of the country 
against each other. I am neither the exclusive advocate of commerce, of 
manufactures, or of agriculture. The American System embraces them all 
I am the advocate of all. When, therefore, I attempt to show to the com- 
mittee the protection which has been extended by this government to its 
navigation, I do it in reply to the argument of the gentleman from Maine, 
and not in a spirit of hostility to that important interest. 

Mr. Buchanan then entered upon an elaborate historical ex- 
amination of the care for the interests of our navigation that 
had been exerted by Congress from 1789 to the time when he 
was speaking.* On the subject of the navy, as likely to be af- 
fected by measures that were complained of for a tendency to 
depress the commercial marine, he said : 

"The gentleman from Maine has used a most astonishing argument 
against any further protection to hemp and flax and iron. We ought not 
further to encourage our farmers to grow flax and hemp, nor our manufac- 
turers to produce iron. And why? Because you will thus deprive the 
navigating interest of the freight Avhich they earn, by carrying these articles 
from Russia to this country. Can the gentleman be serious in contending 
that, for the sake of afibrding freight to the ship-owners, we ought to depend 
upon a foreign country for a supply of these articles? This argument strikes 
at the root of the whole American System. Upon the same principle we 
ought not to manufacture any article whatever at home, because this will 
deprive our ships of the carriage of it from abroad. This principle, had it 
been adopted in practice, would have left us where we were at the close of 
the American Revolution. We should still have been dependent upon for- 
eign nations for articles of the first necessity. This argument amounts to a 
proclamation of war, by our navigation, against the agriculture and manufac- 
tures of the country. You must not produce, because we will then lose the 
carriage, is the sum and substance of the argument. Am I then to be seri- 



* Mr. Buchanan's speech extended through two sessions of the Committee of the Whole. 
After some amendments by the Senate, the bill was finally passed, and was approved by the 
President May 19, 1838. The speech may be found in Gales & Seaton's Register of Debates, 
Vol. IV, Part 2, page 8089, et seq. 



BUCHANAN ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 79 

ously told, that for the purpose of encouraging our ship-owners, our farmers 
ought to be deprived of the markets of their own country, for those agricul- 
tural productions which they can supply in abundance? I did not expect to 
have heard such an argument upon this floor. 

" By encouraging domestic industry, Avhether it be applied to agriculture 
or manufactures, you promote the best interests of your navigation. You 
furnish it with domestic exports to scatter over the world. This is the true 
American System. It protects all interests; it abandons none. It never 
arrays one against another. Upon the principles of the gentleman, we ought 
to sacrifice all the other interests of the country to jiromote our navigation. 
This is asking too much. 

" The gentleman from Maine seems to apprehend great danger to the navy 
from the passage of this bill. He appears to think it will fall with so much 
oppression upon our navigation and fisheries, that these nurseries of seamen 
for the navy may be greatly injured, if not altogether destroyed. 

"In regard to the value and importance of a navy 'to this country, I cor- 
dially agree with the gentleman from Maine. Every prejudice of my youth 
was enlisted in its favor, and the judgment of riper years has strengthened 
and confirmed those early impressions. It is the surest bond of our Union. 
The Western States have a right to demand from this government that the 
mouth of the Mississippi shall be kept open, both in war and in peace. If 
you should not afford them a free passage to the ocean, you cannot expect to 
retain them in the Union; they are, therefore, as much, if not more, inter- 
ested in cherishing the navy than any other portion of the Republic. The 
feeling in its favor contains in it nothing sectional — it is general. We are all 
interested in its preservation and extension. Unlike standing armies, a navy 
never did, nor ever will, destroy the liberties of any country. It is our most 
efficient and least dangerous arm of defence. 

" To what, then, does the argument of the gentleman lead ? Although 
iron, and hemp, and flax, and their manufactures, are essential to the very 
existence of a navy, yet he would make us dependent for them upon the 
will of the Emperor of Russia, or the King of Sweden. A statesman would 
as soon think of being dependent on a foreign nation for gunpowder, or can- 
non, or cannon-balls, or nmskets, as he would for the supply of iron, or flax, 
or hemp, for our navy. Even if these articles could not be produced as 
cheaply in this as in other countries, upon great national principles, then 
domestic production ought to be encouraged, even if it did tax the com- 
munity. They are absolutely necessary for our defence. Without them, 
what would become of you, if engaged in war with a great naval power? 
You would then be as helpless as if you were deprived of gunpowder or 
of cannon. Without them, your navy would be perfectly useless. Shall we, 
then, in a country calculated by nature above all others for their production 
refuse to lend them a helping hand ? I trust not. 

" The gentleman from Maine has said much about our fisheries, and the 
injurious effects which the present bill will have upon them. From this argu- 



80 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

ment, I was induced again to read the bill, supposing that it might possibly 
contain some latent provision, hostile to the fisheries, which I had not been 
able to detect. Indeed, one might have supposed, judging merely fi-om the 
remarks of the gentleman, without a reference to the bill, that it aimed a 
deadly blow against this valuable branch of our national industry. I could 
find nothing in it, which even touched the fisheries. They have ever been 
special favorites of our legislation. I shall not pretend to enumerate, because 
the task might seem invidious, the different acts of Congress affording them 
protection. They are numerous. The gentleman has, in my opinion, been 
very unfortunate in his complaints that they have not been sufficiently pro- 
tected. From the origin of this government, they have been cherished, in 
every possible manner, by our legislation. For their benefit we have adopted 
a system of prohibitions, of drawbacks, and of bounties, unknown to our 
laws in relation to any other subject. They have grown into national impor- 
tance, and have become a great interest of the country. They should con- 
tinue to be cherished, because they are the best nurseries of our seamen. I 
would not withdraw from them an atom of the protection which they have 
received; on the contrary, I should cheerfully vote them new bounties, if new 
bounties were necessary to sustain them. They are the very last interest in 
the country which ought to complain. 

"The gentleman, whilst he strenuously opposed any additional protection 
to domestic iron, and domestic hemp, surely could not have remembered, that 
the productions of the fisheries enjoy a monopoly of the home market. The 
duties in their favor are So high as to exclude foreign competition. We do 
not ask such prohibitory duties upon foreign iron, flax, or hemp. We demand 
but a moderate increase ; and yet the fisheries, which are protected by pro- 
hibitory duties, meet us and deny to us this reasonable request. 

That Mr. Buclianan's opposition to the administration of Mr. 
John Quincy Adams was not carried on in the spirit of a partisan 
is evinced by his action on an appropriation asked for to enable 
the Executive to continue and complete a system of surveys, 
preparatory to a general plan of internal improvements. There 
was much opposition to this appropriation, especially on the 
part of those who denied the power of the General Government 
to make such public works as were then classed as " internal 
improvements." Mr. Buchanan met their objections as fol- 
lows : 

Mr. Buchanan expressed his dissent from the opinions avowed by the 
two gentlemen who had preceded him. The true question ought to be dis- 
tinctly stated. The act of 1824 sanctioned the policy, not of immediately 
entering upon a plan of internal improvement, but of preparing for it, by 



CUMBERLAND EOAD. 81 

obtaining surveys, plans, and estimates in relation to the various roads and 
canals that were required throughout the country. The sum of §30,000 had 
been appropriated, not for a single year, but for a specific purpose, which 
purpose had not yet been accomplished. Many surveys were now in pro- 
gress, which were not more than half completed, and the question was 
whether the House would withdraw the means of completing them. A dis- 
cussion of the general policy of the plan was out of place on an appropriation 
bill. Whatever might be decided as to carrying such a system of internal 
improvement into effect, these surveys were of great advantage to the Amer- 
ican people. Should that system never be adopted, this mass of information 
could not fail to be useful. The constitutional question of power did not 
fairly arise on a proposal to employ the engineers already at the disposal of 
tlie War Department, in a particular manner. 

Should the time ever arrive when we have more in the Treasury than we 
know what to do with, the argument of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Barbour] might have some force. But the question now was, whether the 
House would arrest these surveys ? Mr. B., for one, would not do it. He 
would give the administration the sum now asked, and would hold them 
responsible for its application. 

There is no more interesting part of Mr, Buchanan's early Con- 
gressional career than his course on the subject of the Cumber- 
land Eoad. We have seen that when he first had occasion to act on 
this subject as a member of Congress, he was inclined to accept 
the doctrine that Congress had power to establish this road, and to 
levy tolls for its support. But he had not then closely examined 
this subject. Mr. Monroe's message vetoing the Cumberland 
Eoad bill of 1822 produced in Mr. Buchanan's mind a decided 
change. At a subsequent session, he endeavored, but without 
success, to have the road retroceded to the States through which 
it passed, on condition that they would support it by levying 
tolls.* In 1828-29 he renewed this effort, and on the 29tli of 
January, 1829, he made an elaborate speech upon the whole 
subject, which is of sufiicient interest and importance to warrant 
its reproduction entire. As a constitutional argument it is valu- 
able ; and for its independent attitude towards the people of his 
own State, it is exceedingly creditable to him as a public man. 

* Mr. Buchanan's proposal was not adopted, and on the 2d of March, 1829, the President, 
Mr. Adams, approved " An act for the continuation of the Cumberland Road." Mr. Buchanan 
voted agrainst this bill, saying that he did so reluctantly, but that now the House had voted 
to keep the Cumberland Eoad in repair, by erecting toll-gates upon it under the authority of 
the Federal Government, and so long as this pretension continued to be set up, he would not 
vote for the construction of any road intended, after its completion, to be thus placed under 
the jurisdiction of the United States, as he believed it to be entirely uucoustitutioual. 
I.— 6 



83 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Mr. Buchanan said that the bill and the amendment now before the com- 
mittee presented a subject for discussion of the deepest interest to the Ameri- 
can people. It is not a question (said Mr. B.) whether we shall keep the 
road in repair by appropriations; nor whether Ave shall expend other millions 
in constructing other Cumberland roads — these would be comparatively un- 
important ; but it is a question upon the determination of which, in my hum- 
ble judgment, depend the continued existence of the Federal Constitution in 
anything like its native purity. Let it once be estfiblished that the Federal 
Government can enter the dominion of the States ; interfere with their domes- 
tic concerns ; erect toll-gates over all the military, commercial, and post-roads 
within their territories, and define and punish, by laws of Congress, in the 
courts of the United States, offences committed upon these roads, — and the 
barriers which were erected by our ancestors with so much care, between 
Federal and State power, are entirely prostrated. This single act would, in 
itself, be a longer stride towards consolidation than the Federal Government 
have ever made; and it would be a precedent for establishing a construction 
for the Federal Constitution so vague and so indefinite, that it might be made 
to mean anything or nothing. 

It is not ray purpose, upon the present occasion, again to agitate the ques- 
tions which have so often been discussed in this House, as to the powers of 
Congress in regard to internal improvements. For my own part, I cheerfully 
accord to the Federal Government the power of subscribing stock, in com- 
panies incorporated by the State, for the purpose of making roads and canals ; 
and I entertain no doubt whatever but that we can, under the Constitution, 
appropriate the money of our constituents directly to the construction of in- 
ternal improvements, Avith the consent of the States through which they may 
pass. These powers I shall ever be AviUing to exercise, upon all proper occa- 
sions. But I shall never be driven to support any road, or any canal, Avhich 
my judgment disapproves, by a fear of the senseless clamor which is always 
attempted to be raised against members upon this floor, as enemies to internal 
improvement, Avho dare to vote against any measure which the Committee 
on Roads and Canals think proper to bring before this House. It was my 
intention to discuss the poAver of Congress to pass the bill, and its policy, sep- 
arately. Upon reflection I find these subjects are so intimately blended, they 
cannot be separated. I shall therefore consider them together. 

" Before, however, I enter upon the subject, it will be necessary to present 
a short historical sketch of the Cumberland Road. It OAves its origin to a 
compact betAveen the State of Ohio and the United States. In 1802, Con- 
gress proposed to the convention Avhich formed the constitution of Ohio, that 
they Avould grant to that State one section of land to each township, for the 
use of schools ; that they would also grant to it several tracts of land on 
Avhich there Avere salt springs ; and that five per cent, of the net proceeds of 
the future sale of public lands within its territory should be applied to the 
purpose of making public roads, 'leading from the navigable waters emptying 
into the Atlantic to the Ohio, to the said State, and through the same.' The 



CUMBERLAND EOAD. 83 

act, however, distinctly declares that such roads shall be laid out under the 
authority of Congress, ' with the consent of the several States through which 
the road shall pass.' These terms were offered by Congress, to the State of 
Ohio, provided she would exempt, by an irrevocable ordinance, all the land 
■which should be sold by the United States within her territory, from every 
species of taxation, for the space of five years, after the day of sale. This 
proposition of Congress was accepted by the State of Ohio, and it thus 
became a compact, the terms of which could not be changed without the 
consent of both the contracting parties. By the terms of the compact, this 
five per cent, of the net proceeds of the sales of the public land was applicable 
to two objects; the first, the construction of roads leading from the Atlantic 
to the State of Ohio ; and the second, the construction of roads within that 
State. In 1803, Congress, at the request of Ohio, apportioned this fund 
between these two objects. Three of the five per cent, was appropriated to 
the construction of roads within the State, leaving only two per cent, appli- 
cable to roads leading from the navigable waters of the Atlantic to it. 

"In March, 1806, Congress determined to apply this two per cent, fund 
to the object for which it was destined, and passed ' an act to regulate the 
laying out and making of a road from Cumberland, in the State of Mary- 
land, to the State of Ohio.' Under the provisions of this act, before the 
President could proceed to cut a single tree upon the route of the road, it was 
made necessary to obtain the consent of the States through which it passed. 
The Federal Government asked Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia for per- 
mission to make it, and each of them granted this privilege in the same man- 
ner that they Avould have done to a private individual, or to a corporation 
created by their own laws. Congress, at that day, asserted no other right 
than a mere power to appropriate the money of their constituents to the con- 
struction of this road, after the consent of these States should be obtained. 
The idea of a sovereign power in this government to make the road, and to 
exercise jurisdiction over it, for the purpose of keeping it in repair, does not, 
then, appear to have ever entered the imagination of the warmest advocate 
for Federal power. The federalism of that day would have shrunk with horror 
from such a spectre. There is a circumstance worthy of remark in the act of 
the Legislature of Pennsylvania, which was passed in April, 1807, authorizing 
the President of the United States to open this road. It grants this power 
upon condition that the road should pass through Uniontown and Washing- 
ton, if practicable. The grant was accepted upon this condition, and the 
road was constructed. Its length is one hundred and thirty miles, and its 
construction and repairs have cost the United States one million seven hun- 
dred and sixty-six thousand one hundred and sixty-six dollars and tliirty- 
eight cents ; whilst the two per cent, fund which we had bound ourselves to 
apply to this purpose, amounted, on the 30th of June, 1822, the date of the 
last official statement within my knowledge, only to the sum of one hundred 
and eighty-seven thousand seven hundred and eighty-six dollars and thirty- 
one cents, less than one-ninth of the cost of the road. This road has cost the 



84 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

United States more than thirteen thousand five hundred dollars per mile. 
This extravagant expenditure shows conclusively that it is much more politic for 
us to enlist individual interest in the cause of Internal Improvement, by sub- 
scribing stock, than to become ourselves sole proprietors. Any government, 
unless under extraordinary circumstances, will pay one-third more for con- 
structing a road or canal, than would be expended by individuals in accom- 
plishing the same object. 

" I shall now proceed to the argument. Upon a review of this brief his- 
tory, what is the conclusion at which we must arrive ? That this road was 
made by the United States, as a mere proprietor, to carry into effect a con- 
tract with the State of Ohio, and not as a sovereign. In its construction, the 
Federal Government proceeded as any corporation or private individual would 
have done. We asked the States for permission to make the road through 
the territories over which their sovereign authority extended. After that 
permission had been obtained, we appropriated the money and constructed 
the road. The State of Pennsylvania even annexed a condition to her grant, 
with Avhich the United States complied. She also conferred upon the agents 
of the United States the power of taking materials for the construction and 
repair of this road, without the consent of the owner, making a just compen- 
sation therefor. This compensation was to be ascertained under the laws of 
the State, and not under those of the Uuited States. The mode of proceeding 
to assess damages in such cases against the United States was precisely the 
same as it is against corporations, created by her own laws, for the purpose 
of constructing roads. 

" What, then, does this precedent establish ? Simply, that the United 
States may appropriate money for the construction of a road through the 
territories of a State, with its consent ; and I do not entertain the least doubt 
but that we possess this power. What does the present bill propose ? To 
change the character which the United States has hitherto sustained, in rela- 
tion to this road, from that of a simple proprietor to a sovereign. To declare 
to the nation, that, although they had to ask the States of Maryland, Penn- 
sylvania and Virginia, for permission to make the road, now, after it is com- 
pleted, they will exercise jurisdiction over it, and collect tolls upon it, under 
the authority of their own laws, for the purpose of keeping it in repair. We 
will not ask the States to erect toll-gates for us. We are determined to exer- 
cise that power ourselves. The Federal Government first introduced itself 
into the States as a friend, by permission ; it now wishes to hold possession 
as a sovereign, by power. This road was made in the manner that one inde- 
pendent sovereign would construct a road through the territories of another. 
Had Virginia been a party to the compact with Ohio, instead of the United 
States, she would have asked the permission of Maryland and Pennsylvania 
to construct the Cumberland Road through their territories, and it would have 
been granted. But wdiat would have been our astonishment, after this per- 
mission, had Virginia attempted to assume jurisdiction over the road in Penn- 
sylvania, to erect toll-gates upon it under the authority of her own laws, and 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 85 

to punish offenders against these laws in her own courts. Yet the two cases 
are nearly parallel. 

The right to demand toll, and to stop and punish passengers for refusing to 
pay it, is emphatically a sovereign right, and has ever been so considered 
amongst civilized nations. The power to erect toll-gates necessarily implies, 
1st, The stoppage of the passenger until he shall pay the toll; 2d, His trial 
land punishment, if he should, either by force or by fraud, evade, or attempt 
to evade, its payment; 3d, A discretionary power as to the amount of toll; 
4th, The trial and punishment of persons who may wilfully injure the road, 
or violate the police established upon it. These powers are necessarily im- 
plied. "Without the exercise of them, you could not proceed with safety to 
collect the toll for a single day. Other powers will soon be exercised. If 
you compel passengers to pay toll, the power of protecting them Avhilst 
traveUing along your road is almost a necessary incident. The sovereign 
who receives the toll, ought naturally to possess the power of protecting him 
who pays it. To vest the power of demanding toll in one sovereign, and the 
protection of the traveller's person in another, would be almost an absurdity. 
The Federal Government would probaljly, ere long, exercise the power of 
trying and punishing murders and robberies, and all other offences committed 
upon the road. To what jurisdiction would the trial and punishment of these 
offences necessarily belong ? To the courts of the United States, and to them 
alone. In Ohio, in New York, in Virginia, and in Maryland, it has been de- 
termined that State courts, even if Congress should confer it, have no juris- 
diction over any penal action, or criminal offence, against the laws of the 
United States. Even if these decisions were incorrect, still it has never been 
seriously contended that State courts were bound to take jurisdiction in such 
cases. It must be admitted, by all, that Congress have not the power to 
compel an execution of their criminal or penal laws by the courts of the 
States. This is sufficient for my argument. Even if the power existed, in 
State courts, they never ought, unless upon extraordinary occasions, to try 
and to punish offences committed against the United States. The peace and 
the harmony of the people of this country require that the powers of the 
two governments should never be blended. The dividing line between their 
separate jurisdictions should be clearly marked ; otherwise dangerous col- 
lisions between them must be the inevitable consequence. In two of the 
States through which this road passes, it has already been determined that 
their courts cannot take jurisdiction over offences committed against the laws 
of Congress. What, then, is the inevitable consequence ? All the penal 
enactments of this bill, or of the future bills which it will become necessary 
to pass to supply its defects, must be carried into execution by the Federal 
courts. Any citizen of the United States, charged with the most trifling 
offence against the police of this road, must be dragged for trial to the Fed- 
eral court of that State within whose jurisdiction it is alleged to have been 
committed. If committed in Maryland, the trial must take place in Balti- 
more ; if in Pennsylvania, at Clarksburg. 



86 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The distance of one hundred or two hundred miles, which he would bo 
compelled to travel to take his trial, and the exj^enses which he must neces- 
sarily iucur, would, in themselves, be a severe punishment for a more 
aggravated offence. Besides, the people of the neighborhood would be 
harassed in attending as witnesses at such a great distance from their places 
of abode. These, and many other inconveniences, which I shall not 
enumerate, would soon compel Congress to authorize the appointment of 
justices of the peace, or some other inferior tribunals, along the whole extent 
of the Cumberland Road. 

Can any man lay his hand upon his heart and say that, in his conscience, 
he believes the Federal Constitution ever intended to bestow such powers on 
Congress ? The great divisions of power, distinctly marked in that instru- 
ment, are external and internal. The first are conferred upon the General 
Government — the last, with but lew exceptions, and those distinctly defined, 
remain in possession of the States. It never — never was intended that the 
vast and mighty machinery of this Government should be introduced into the 
domestic, the local, the interior concerns of the States, or that it should spend 
its power in collecting toll at a turnpike gate. I have not been presenting 
possible cases to the committee. I have confined myself to what must be 
the necessary effects of the passage of the bill now before us. By what au- 
thority is such a tremendous power claimed ? That it is not expressly given 
by the Constitution, is certain. If it exists at all, it must, therefore, be in- 
cidental to some express power; and in the language of the Constitution, " be 
necessary and proper for carrying that power into execution." From the 
very nature of incidental power, it cannot transcend the specific power which 
calls it into existence. The stream cannot flow higher than its fountain. This 
principle applies, with peculiar force, to the construction of the Constitution. 
For the purpose of carrying into effect any of its specific powers, it would 
be absurd to contend that you might exercise another power, greater and 
more dangerous than that expressly given. The means must be subordinate 
to the end. Were any other construction to prevail, this Government would 
no longer be one of limited powers. 

The present case affords a striking and forcible illustration of this principle. 
Let it be granted that you have a right, as proprietor, by the permission of 
the States, to make a road through their territories, can it ever follow, as an 
incident to this mere power of appropriating the public money, that you may 
exercise jurisdiction over this very road, as a sovereign? If you could, the 
incident is as much greater than the principal, as sovereign is superior to in- 
dividual power. It does follow that you can keep the road in repair, by ap- 
propriations, in the same manner that you have made it ; but this is the utmost 
hmit of your power. What, Sir? Exclusive jurisdiction over the road, for 
its preservation, and for the punishment of all offenders who travel upon it, 
and that as an incident to the mere power of expending your money upon its 
construction ! The idea is absurd. 

Under the power given to Congress " to establish post offices and post 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 87 

roads," the Federal Government possess the undoubted right of converting 
any road already constructed, within any State of this Union, into a post 
road. 

Let it also be granted, for the sake of the argument, that they possess the 
power, independently of the will of the States, to construct as many post 
roads throughout the Union as they think proper, and to keep them in re- 
pair ; does it follow that they can establish toll-gates upon such roads ? 
Certainly not. What is the nature of the power conferred upon Congress? 
It is a mere right to carry and to protect the mails. It is confined to a single 
purpose — to the transportation of the mail, and the punishment of offences 
which violate that right. This is the sole object of the power — the sole pur- 
pose for which it was called into existence. Over some post roads, the mail 
is carried once per day, and over others once per week. "VVitii what justice 
can it be contended that this right of passage for a single purpose — this 
occasional use of the roads within the different States for post roads — vests in 
Congress the power of closing up these roads against all the citizens of those 
States, at all times, until they have paid such a toll as we think proper to im- 
pose. Let me present the naked argument of gentlemen before their own 
eyes. Congress have the right, under the Constitution, " to establish post 
offices and post roads." As an incident they possess the power of construct- 
ing post roads. As another incident to this right of passage for a single pur- 
pose they possess the power to assume jurisdiction over all post roads in the 
different States, and prevent any person from passing over them, unless upon 
such terms as they may prescribe. This would, indeed, be construction con- 
strued. I would like the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Mercer) to furnish 
the committee with an answer to this argument. If I were to grant to that 
gentleman a right of passage, for a particular purpose only, over a road 
which belonged to me, what would be my surprise and ray imlignation, were 
he to shut it up, by the erection of toll-gates, and prohibited me from passing 
unless I paid him toll. 

Should Congress act upon the precedent which the passage of this bill would 
establish, it is impossible to foresee the dangers which must follow, to the 
States and to the people of this country. Upon this branch of the question, 
permit me to quote the language of Mr. Monroe, in his celebrated message of 
May, 1822, denymg the constitutional power of Congress to erect toll-gates 
on the Cumberland Road. " If," said he, " the United States possessed the 
power contended for under this grant, might they not, on adopting the roads 
of the individual States for the carriage of the mail, as has been done, as- 
sume jurisdiction over them, and preclude a right to interfere with, or alter 
them ? Might they not establish turnpikes, and exercise all the other acts of 
sovereignty above stated, over such roads, necessary to protect them from 
injury, and defray the expense of repairing them? Surely, if the right exists, 
these consequences necessarily followed, as soon as the road was established. 
The absurdity of such a pretension must be apparent to all who examine it. 
In this way, a large portion of the territory of every State might be taken 



SS LIFE OF JAMES BUCHAXAX. 

fros :: : for iere i^ scarcelv a iv»d in. anv Scite which. wi3 ztot be used £)r 
cie c^insvorrarion o: the mal A new fieid tor kgblatiaa and mtpmal 
govern— en: ^cnli n.us be opened." Argnments of the sazne mfeoFe wmld 
appij wi±. eqn^il. if not greAter fime^ to &09e mads vitidi n^bt be used hf 
ciie Un::ei Sra:£S ibc die tnnaportatkn of militaiy stores, or ^ the medium 
o£ coninierce between tibe (fif^rest Sc&zes. I shaQ not now enlarse npoa 
tiiis braaco. of the subject. befieTing it, as I do. to be whotfr tmaecesarr. 

There is another view of this subject which I deem to be condusiTB. The 
Coossiiaitiott of ihe Uaited Scales provides that - Cocgress shall ha^e pow^ 
to exercBse eidtisiTe legisiatioa, in. aH cases whacsoeTer. over soch «2strict 
(not exceemi^ ten miles square) as may. bv cession of paraoular States, and 
the acceptanee of CocgresSj become the seat of the Gc'Temmerit of the United 
Sca:cs. ini to exervsse the like authority over all places purchised by the 
coGsen: of liie Legiaatxrre of the State in which the same 'gfi-tH fcie. for the 
erectioa of forts, niagaiiiies, arsenals, dockyards and other needful building"' 
This is the only clause in the Coastitutioa which authorizes the Federal Gov- 
ernment to acq-.iire jarisdicuon over any poruoo. of the terntory of the Stat»s ; 
and this power is eipresdy confined to sodi forts, magaix'nes. arsenals, dock- 
yards, and other neediul buildings, as the States may cocisder necessiry for 
the deteace of the country. Too will thus. Sir. perceive with what jealoasy 
oar ancestors cocierred jurisdzotion upon this Government — even ever such 
j^aces as were absolutely necessary for the exercse of the power of wan 
This power. — ^wiiich is the power of self^efenoe— of self-p-r^ervation — the 
power givea. to this Government of wielding the whole physical torce of the 
country for the preservation of iE existence and its liberties — does no« coo- 
fer any implied Jnrisdictioa over the anaEest portion of territory. An ex- 
press authority is given to acquire jurisdiction, for military and for naval pur- 
poses, and for them alone, with the consent of the Spates. Unless that con- 
sent has been firss obtained, the vast power of war confers no incidental 
jurxsdiodon, even over die fanTmn in your national tortiQcatioos. How. then, 
can it fc'e eoctended, with the least hope of success, that the same Cocstitutioo, 
which thus expressly limits our power of acquiring jari«dictioa. to particolar 
sro:s. necesary foe the purpose of national deience, should, by implicatioa. as 
an Inoiient to the power to establish post oSces and post roads, authorize na 
to assume j-irisdiction over a road one hundred and thirty mUes m length, and 
over all the cdier poet roads in the country. If tri.< construction be correct, 
all the limistions upon Federal power, eoutained in the Constitution, are idle 
and vain. There is no power which t'nfs; Government shall ever wish to 
usurp, which carmot. by ingenuity, be found lurking in some of the express 
powers granted by the Constiration. In my humble judgment the argument 
in favor of the constructive power to pass the sedition law is much more 
plausible than any that can be urged by the advccates of this bilL in iavor of 
its passage. I beg gendemea to reflect before they vote in its &vor. 

I t]i:\nV the gentleman from Ohio (ifr. Vance) for having reminded me of 
the resolution passed by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, at their last se:^oo, 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 89 

whicli authorizes the Federal Government to erect toll-gates upon this road, 
within that Commonwealth ; to " enforce the collection of tolls, and, gener- 
ally, to do and perform any and every other act and thing which may be 
deemed necessary, to ensure the permanent repair and preservation of the 
said road." 

I feel the most unfeigned respect for the Legislature of my native State. 
Their deliberate opinion, upon any subject, wiU always have a powerful in- 
fluence over my judgment. It is fairly entitled to as much consideration as 
the opinion of this or any other legislative body in the Union. This resolu- 
tion, however, was adopted, as I Ijave been informed, without much delibera- 
tion and without debate. It owes its passage to the anxious desire which 
that body feel to preserve the Cumberland Road from ruin. The constitutional 
question was not brought into discussion. Had it been fairly submitted to 
that Republican Legislature, I most solemnly believe they would have been 
the last in this Union to sanction the assumption, by this Government, of a 
jurisdiction so ultra-Federal in its nature, and so well calculated to destroy the 
rights of the States. 

But this resolution can have no influence upon the present discussion. The 
people of the State of Pennsylvania never conferred upon their Legislature 
the power to cede jurisdiction over any portion of their territory to the 
United States, or to any other sovereign. If the Legislatures of tlie dificrent 
States could exercise such a power, the road to consolidation would be direct. 
If they can cede jurisdiction to this Government over any portion of their 
territories, they can cede the whole, and thus altogether destroy the Federal 
system. 

Even if the States possessed the power to cede, the United States have no 
power to accept such cessions. Their authority to accept cessions of juris- 
diction is confined to places " for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals 
dockyards and other needful buildings." Mr. Monroe, in the message to 
which I have already referred, declares his opinion " that Congress do not 
possess this power; that the States, individually, cannot grant it; for, 
although they may assent to the appropriation of money, within their limits, 
for such purposes, they can grant no power of jurisdiction, or sovereignty, by 
special compacts with the United States." 

I think it is thus rendered abundantly clear that, if Congress do not possess 
the power, under the Federal Constitution, to pass this bill, the States through 
which the road passes cannot confer it upon them, I feel convinced that even 
the gentleman who reported this bill (Mr. Mercer) will not contend that the 
resolution of the Legislature of Pennsylvania could bestow any jurisdiction 
upon the Government. I am justified in this reference, because that resolu- 
tion is, in its nature, conditional, and requires that the amount of tolls col- 
lected in Pennsylvania shall be applied, exclusively, to the repair of the road 
within that State ; and the present bill contains no provision to carry this 
condition into effect. The gentleman cannot, therefore, derive his authority 
to pass this bill from a grant the provisions of which he has disregarded. 



90 ' LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

This question has already been settled, so far as a solemn legislative prece- 
dent can settle any question. During the session of 1821-2, a bill, similar in 
its provisions to the one now before the committee, passed both Houses of 
Congress. The vote, on its passage in this House, was eighty-seven in the 
affirmative, and sixty-eight in the negative, Mr. Monroe, then President of 
the United States, returned this bill to the House of Representatives, with his 
objections. So powerful, and so convincing, were his arguments, that, upon 
its reconsideration, but sixty-eight members voted in the affirmative, whilst 
seventy-two voted in the negative. Thus, Sir, you perceive, that this House 
have already solemnly declared, in accordance with the deliberate opinion of 
the late President of the United States, that Congress do not possess the 
power to erect toll-gates upon the Cumberland Road. That distinguished in- 
dividual was the last of the race of Revolutionary Presidents, and, from the 
soundness of his judgment and the elevated stations which he has occupied, 
his opinion is entitled to the utmost respect. He was an actor in many of the 
political scenes of that day when the Constitution was framed, and when it 
went into operation, under the auspices of Washington — " all which he saw, 
and part of which he was." He is, therefore, one of the few surviving 
statesmen who, from actual knowledge, can inform the present generation 
what were the opinions of the past. The solemnity and the ability with 
which he has resisted the exercise of the power of Congress to pass this bill 
prove, conclusively, the great importance which he attached to the subject. 

During that session, I first had the honor of a seat in this House ; I voted 
for the passage of that bill. I had not reflected upon the constitutional 
question, and I was an advocate of the policy of keeping the road in 
repair by collecting tolls from those who travelled upon it. After I read 
the constitutional objections of Mr. Monroe my opinion was changed, 
and I have ever since been endeavoring, upon all proper occasions, to atone 
for my vote, by advocating a cession of the road to the respective States 
through which it passes, that they may erect toll-gates upon it and keep it in 
repair. 

There was a time in the history of this country — I refer to the days of the 
first President of the United States — when the Government was feeble, and 
when, in addition to its own powers, the weight of his personal character was 
necessaiy fairly to put it in motion. Jealousy of Federal power was then the 
order of the day. The gulf of consolidation then yawned before the imagina- 
tion of many of our wisest and best patriots, ready to swallow up the rights of 
the States and the liberties of the people. In those days, this vast machine 
had scarcely got into regular motion. Its power and its patronage were 
then in their infancy, and there was, perhaps, more danger that the jealousy 
of the States should destroy efficiency of the Federal Government than that 
it should crush their power. Times have changed. The days of its feeble- 
ness and of childhood have passed away. It is now a giant — a Briareus — 
stretching forth its hundred arms, dispensing its patronage, and increasing 
its power over every portion of the Union. What patronage and what 



CUMBERLAND ROAD. 91 

power have the States to oppose to this increasing influence? Glance your 
eye over the extent of the Union ; compare State offices with those of the 
United States ; and whether avarice or ambition be consulted, those which 
belong to the General Government are greatly to be preferred to the offices 
which the States can bestow. Jealousy of Federal power — not of a narrow 
and mean character, but a watchful and uncompromising jealousy — is now 
the dictate of the soundest patriotism. The General Government possesses 
the exclusive right to impose duties upon imports — by far the most produc- 
tive and the most popular source of revenue. United and powerful effiarts are 
now making to destroy the revenue which the States derive from sales at 
auction. This Government is now asked to interpose its power between the 
buyer and seller, and put down public sales of merchandise within the differ- 
ent States — a subject heretofore believed to be within the exclusive jurisdic- 
diction of the State sovereignties. Whilst the Federal Government has been 
advancing with rapid strides, the people of the States have seldom been 
awakened to a sense of their danger. In the late political struggle, they were 
aroused, and they nobly maintained their own rights. This, I trust, will al- 
ways be the case hereafter. Tliank Heaven ! whilst the people continue true 
to themselves, the Constitution contains within itself those principles which 
must ever preserve it. From its very nature — from a difference of opinion as 
to the constructive powers which may be necessary and proper to carry those 
which are enumerated into effect — it must ever call into existence two parties, 
the one jealous of Federal, the other of State power ; the one anxious to ex- 
tend Federal influence, the other wedded to State rights; the one desirous to 
limit, the other to extend, the power and the j^atronage of the General Gov- 
ernment. In the intermediate space there will be much debatable ground ; 
but a general outline will still remain sufficiently distinct to mark the division 
between the political parties which have divided, and which will probably 
continue to divide, the people of this country. Jealousy of Federal power 
had long been slumbering. The voice of Virginia sounding the alarm has at 
length awakened several of her sister States; and, although they believe her 
to be too strict in her construction of the Constitution and her doctrines con- 
cerning State rights, yet, they are now willing to do justice to the steadiness 
and patriotism of her political character. She has kept alive a wholesome 
jealousy of Federal power. If, then, there be a party in this country fiiendly 
to the rights of the States and of the people, I call upon them to oppose the 
passage of this bill. Should it become a law, it will establish a precedent 
under the authority of Avhich the sovereign power of this Government can be 
brought home into the domestic concerns of every State in the Union. We 
may then take under our own jurisdiction every road over which the mail is 
carried ; every road over which our soldiers and warlike munitions may pass ; 
and every road used for the purpose of carr3ang on commerce between the 
several States. Once establish this strained construction of the Federal Con- 
stitution, and I would ask gentlemen to point out the Hmit where this splen- 
did government shall be compelled to stay its chariot wheels. Might it not 
then drive on to consolidation, under the sanction of the Constitution ? 



92 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Is there any necessity for venturing upon this dangerous and doubtful 
measure? I appeal to those gentlemen who suppose the power to be clear 
what motive they can have for forcing this measure upon us, who are of a 
difterent opinion? Can it make any diflcrcnce to them whether those toll- 
gates shall be erected under a law of the United States, or under State 
authority ? Cannot the Legislature of Pennsylvania enact this bill into a law 
as well as the Congress of the United States ? Nobody will doubt their right. 
I trust no gentleman upon this floor will question the fidelity of that State in 
complying with all her engagements. She has ever been true to every trust. 
If she should accept of the cession, as I have no doubt she would, I will 
pledge myself that you shall never again hear of the road, unless it be that 
she has kept it in good repair, and that under her care it has answered every 
purpose for which it was intended. 

I know that some popular feeling has been excited against myself in that 
portion of Pennsylvania though which the road passes. I have been repre- 
sented as one of its greatest enemies. I now take occasion thus publicly to 
deny this allegation. It is true that I cannot vote in favor of the passage of 
this bill, and thus, in my judgment, violate the oath which I have taken to 
support the Constitution of the United States. No man can expect this from 
me. But it is equally true that I have heretofore supported appropriations 
for the repair of this road ; and should my amendment prevail, I shall vote in 
favor of the appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars for that purpose 
which is contained in this bill. 

At a late period in the second, session of this Congress, 
Febriiarj G, 1829, a resohition was introduced by Mr. Smyth 
of Virginia, proposing to amend the Constitntion so as to make 
every President ineligible to the office a second time. Whether 
this was aimed at General Jackson, who had been elected Pres- 
ident in the autumn of 1828, and was to be inaugurated in 
about thirty days, or whether it had no special object, it was 
generally regarded as a subject for the discussion of which the 
remaining time of this Congress was entirely insufficient. 
Upon a motion to postpone the resolution to the 3d of March, 
Mr. Buchanan said : 

He should vote in favor of the postponement of this resolution until the 
3d of March. He did not think that the great constitutional question which 
it presented ought to be decided, without more time and more reflection than 
it would be possible to bestow upon it at this late period of the session. "We 
had heard the able and ingenious argument of the gentleman from Vir- 
ginia (Mr. Smyth) in favor of the proposition, whilst no argument had been 
urged upon the other side of the question. He said that a more important 
question could not be presented in a republic, than a proposition to change 



1 



INELIGIBILITY OF A PRESIDENT. 93 

the Constitution in regard to the election of the Supreme Executive Magis- 
trate. " It is better to bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know 
not of," unless the existing evils are great, and we have a moral certainty 
that the change will not be productive of still greater evils. The Constitu- 
tion has been once changed since its adoption, and it is now generally ad- 
mitted that the alteration was for tiie worse, and not for the better. This 
change grew out of the excitement of the moment. It provided against the 
existence of an evil which, probably, would not again have occurred for a 
long period of time ; but in doing so, it has rendered it almost certain that 
the election of a President shall often devolve upon the House of Representa- 
tives. Had the Constitution remained in its original form ; had each elector 
continued to vote for two persons, instead of one ; it could rarely, if ever, 
have occurred that some one candidate would not have received a majority of 
all the electoral votes. By this change, we have thus entailed a great evil 
upon the country. 

The example of Washington, whicli has been followed by Jefferson, Madi- 
son and Monroe, has forever determined tliat no President shall be more than 
once re-elected. This principle is now become as sacred as if it were written 
in the Constitution. I would incline to leave to the people of the United 
States, without incorporating it in the Constitution, to decide whether a 
President should serve longer than one term. The day may come, when 
dangers shall lower over us, and when we may have a President at the helm 
of State who possesses the confidence of the country, and is better able to 
weather the storm than any otlier pilot ; shall we, then, under such circum- 
stances, deprive the people of the United States of the power of obtaining 
his services for a second term ? Shall wc pass a decree, as fixed as fate, to 
bind the American people^ and prevent them from ever re-electing such a 
man ? I am not afraid to trust them with this power. 

There is another reason why the House should not be called upon to decide 
this question hastily. It is a great evil to keep the public mind excited, as 
it would be, by the election of a new President at the end of each 
term of four years. Under the existing system, it is probable that, as 
a general rule, a President, elected by the people, will once be re-elected, 
unless he shall by his conduct have deprived himself of public confidence. 
This will, in many instances, prevent the recurrence of a political storm more 
than once in eight years. These are some of the suggestions which induce 
me to vote for the postponement of this resolution to a day that will render 
it impossible for us to act upon it during the present session of Congress. 
We ought to have ample time to consider this subject before we act. 



CHAPTER YI. 

1829— 1831. 

THE FIRST ELECTION OF GENEEAL JACKSON— BUCHANAN AGAIN ELECTED 
TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES — HE BECOMES CHAIRMAN OF 
THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE — IMPEACHMENT OF JUDGE PECK— BU- 
CHANAN DEFEATS A REPEAL OF THE 25tH SECTION OF THE JUDICI- 
ARY ACT — PROPOSED IN PENNSYLVANIA AS A CANDIDATE FOR THE 
VICE-PRESIDENCY— WISHES TO RETIRE FROM PUBLIC LIFE — FITNESS 
FOR GREAT SUCCESS AT THE BAR. 

aEXERAL JACKSOX was elected President of the 
United States in the autumn of 1828, by a majority of 
forty-eight electoral votes over Mr. John Qiiincy Adams, and 
was inaugurated March 4, 1829. Mr. Calhoun became Vice- 
President by a majority of forty-one electoral votes. Mr. 
Buchanan had entered into the popular canvass in favor of 
General Jackson with much zeal and activit3^ His efforts to 
secure for the General the popular vote of Pennsylvania, Mdiich 
were begun in the summer of 1827, were in danger of being 
embarrassed at that time by the General's misconception of the 
purpose of Mr. Buchanan's interview with him, which took 
place in 1824, wlule the election of a President was pending in 
the House of Representatives. But Mr. Buchanan conducted 
himself in that matter with so much discretion and forbearance 
that his influence with General Jackson's Pennsylvania friends 
was not seriously impaired. "When the canvass of 1828 came 
on, he was in a position to be regarded as one of the most effi- 
cient political supporters of General Jackson in the State ; and 
indeed it was mainly through his influence that the whole of 
her twenty-eight electoral votes was secured for the candidate 
whose election he desired. Yet this commanding position 
did not lead him to expect office of any kind in the new ad- 
ministration, nor does he appear to have desired any. He was 



CHAIRMA]^^ OF THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE. 95 

re-elected to his old seat in Congress, and was in attendance 
at the opening of the first session of the 21st Congress in 
December, 1829. He now became Chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee of the House, and as such had very weighty duties 
to perform. 

J One of the first of these duties, and one that he discharged 
with signal ability, required him to introduce and advocate a 
bill to amend and extend the judicial system of the United 
States, by including in the circuit court system the States of 
Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, and Mis- 
souri, which had hitherto had only district com'ts, and by 
increasing the number of judges of the Supreme Court to nine. 
Mr. Buchanan's speech in explanation of this measure, de- 
livered January 14, 1830, was as important a one as has been 
made upon the subject. The measure which he advocated was 
not adopted at that time ; but his speech may be resorted to at 
all times for its valuable discussion of a question that has not 
yet lost its interest, — the question of releasing the judges of the 
Supreme Court entirely from the performance of circuit duties. 
Until I read this speech, I was not aware how wisely and compre- 
hensively Mr. Buchanan could deal with such a question. The 
following passages seem to me to justify a very high estimate 
of his powers, as they certainly contain nnich wisdom : 

Having thus given a hasty sketch of the history of the Judiciary of the 
United States, and of the jurisdiction of the circuit courts which this bill 
proposes to extend to the six new States of the Union, I shall now proceed 
to present the views of the Committee on the Judiciary in relation to this 
important subject. In doing this, I feel that, before I can expect the passage 
of the bill, I must satisfy the committee, first, that such a change or modifi- 
cation of the present judiciary system ought to be adopted, as will place the 
Western States on an equal footing with the other States of the Union ; 
and, second, that the present bill contains the best provisions which, under 
all the cu-cumstances, can be devised for accomplishing this purpose. 

And fii-st, in regard to the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It 
may be said that the existing law has already established circuit courts in 
these three States, and why then should they complain ? In answer to this 
question, I ask gentlemen to look at a map of the United States, and ex- 
amine the extent of this circuit. The distance which the judge is compelled 
to travel, by land, for the purpose of attending the difierent circuit courts, is, 
of itself, almost sufficient, in a few years, to destroy any common constitu- 



96 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

tion. From Columbus, in Ohio, he proceeds to Frankfort, in Kentucky ; 
from Frankfort to Nashville; and from Nashville, across the Cumberland 
mountain, to Knoxville. When we reflect that, in addition to his attendance 
of the courts in each of these States, twice in the year, he is obliged annually 
to attend the Supreme Court in Washington, we must all admit that his labors 
are very severe. 

This circuit is not only too extensive, but there is a great press of judicial 
business in each of the States of which it is composed. In addition to the 
ordinary sources of litigation for the circuit courts throughout the Union, par- 
ticular causes have existed for its extraordinary accumulation in each of 
these States. It will be recollected that, under the Constitution and laws of 
the United States, the circuit courts may try land causes between citizens of 
the same State, provided they claim under grants from different States. In 
Tennessee, grants under that State and the State of North Carolina, for the 
same land, often come into conflict in the circuit court. The interfering 
grants of Virginia and Kentucky are a fruitful source of business for the 
circuit court of Kentucky. These causes, from their very nature, are difficult 
and important, and must occupy much time and attention. Within the Vir- 
ginia military district of Ohio, there are also many disputed land titles. 

Another cause has contributed much to swell the business of the circuit 
court of Kentucky. The want of confidence of the citizens of other States 
in the judicial tribunals of that State, has greatly added to the number of 
suits in the circuit court. Many plaintiffs, who could, with greater expedi- 
tion, have recovered their demands in the courts of the State, were compelled, 
by the impolitic acts of the State Legislature, to resort to the courts of the 
United States. Wliilst these laws were enforced by the State courts, they 
were disregarded by those of the Union. In making these remarks, I am 
confident no representative from that patriotic State will mistake my mean- 
ing. I rejoice that the difficulties are now at an end, and that the people of 
Kentucky have discovered the ruinous policy of interposing the arm of the 
law to shield a debtor from the just demands of his creditor. That gallant 
and chivalrous people, who possess a finer soil and a finer climate than any 
other State of the Union, will now, I trust, improve and enjoy the bounties 
which nature has bestowed upon them with a lavish hand. As their ex- 
perience has been severe, I trust their reformation Avill be complete. Still, 
however, many of the causes which originated in past years, are yet de- 
pending in the circuit court of that State. 

In 1S26, when a similar bill was before this House, we had the most au- 
thentic information that there were nine hundred and fifty causes then 
pending in the circuit court of Kentuck}', one hundred and sixty in the cir- 
cuit court for the western district, and about the same number in that for the 
eastern district of Tennessee, and upwards of two hundred in Ohio. Upon 
that occasion, a memorial was presented from the bar of Nashville, signed by 
G. W. Campbell as chairman, and Felix Grundy, at present a Senator of the 
United Scates, as secretary. These gentlemen are both well known to this 



SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY ACT. 97 

House, and to the country. That memorial declares that " the seventh cir- 
cuit, consisting of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, is too large for the duties 
of it to be devolved on one man ; and it was absolutely impossible for the 
judge assigned to this circuit to fulfil the letter of the law designating his 
duties. Such has been the delay of justice in the State of Tennessee, " that 
some of the important causes now pending in their circuit courts are older 
than the professional career of almost every man at the bar." 

The number of causes depending in the seventh circuit, I am informed, 
has been somewhat reduced since 1826 ; but still the evil is gv^^ and de- 
mands a remedy. If it were possible for one man to transact t*fe judicial 
business of that circuit, I should have as much confidence that it would be 
accomplished by the justice of the Supreme Court to which it is assigned, as 
by any other judge in the Union. His ability and his perseverance are well 
known to the nation. The labor, however, both of body and mind, is too 
great for any individual. 

Has not the delay of justice in this circuit almost amounted to its denial ? 
Are the States which compose it placed upon the same footing, in this respect, 
with other States of the Union ? Have they not a right to complain ? 
Many evils follow in the train of tardy justice. It deranges the whole 
business of society. It tempts the dishonest and the needy to set up unjust 
and fraudulent defences against the payment of just debts, knowing that the 
day of trial is far distant. It thus ruins the honest creditor, by depriving 
him of the funds which he had a right to expect at or near the appointed 
time of payment; and it ultimately tends to destroy all confidence between 
man and man. 

A greater curse can scarcely be inflicted upon the people of any State, 
than to have their land titles unsettled. What, then, must be the condition of 
Tennessee, where there are many disputed land titles, when we are informed, 
by undoubted authority, " that some of the important causes now pending 
in their circuit courts are older than the professional career of almost every 
man at the bar." Instead of being astonished at the complaints of the 
people of this circuit, I am astonished at their forbearance. A judiciary, able 
and willing to compel men to perform their contracts, and to decide their con- 
troversies, is one of the greatest political blessings which any people can en- 
joy ; and it is one which the people of this country have a right to expect 
from their Government. The present bill proposes to accomplish this ob- 
ject, by creating a new circuit out of the States of Kentucky and Tennessee. 
This circuit will afford sufficient employment for one justice of the Supreme 
Court. 

Without insisting further upon the propriety, nay, the necessity, of or- 
ganizing the circuit courts of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, in such a 
manner as to enable them to transact the business of tlie people, I shall now 
proceed to consider the situation of the six new States, Louisiana, Indiana, 
Mississippi, IlHnofe, Alabama, and Missouri. Their grievances are of a dif- 
ferent character. They do not so much complain of the delay of justice, as 
I.— 7 



98 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

that Congress has so long refused to extend to them the circuit court system, 
as it exists in all the other States. As they successively came into the Union, 
they were each provided with a district court and a district judge, possessing 
circuit court powers. The acts which introduced them into our political family 
declare that they shall " be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with 
the original States, in all respects whatever." I do not mean to contend that 
by virtue of these acts we were bound immediately to extend to them the 
circuit court system. Such has not been the practice of Congress, in regard 
to other States in a similar situation. I contend, however, that these acts do 
impose an obligation upon us to place them "on an equal footing with the 
original States," in regard to the judiciary, as soon as their wants require 
it, and the circumstances of the country permit it to be done. That time 
has, in my opinion, arrived. Louisiana has now been nearly eighteen years 
a member of the Union, and is one of our most commercial States ; and yet, 
until this day, she has been without a circuit court. It is more than thirteen 
years since Indiana was admitted ; and even our youngest sister, Missouri, 
will soon have been nine years in the family. Why should not these six 
States be admitted to the same judicial privileges which all the others now 
enjoy ? Even if there were no better reason, they have a right to demand it 
for the mere sake of uniformity. I admit this is an argument dictated by 
State pride; but is not that a noble feeling? Is it not a feeling which will 
ever characterize freemen ? Have they not a right to say to us, if the cir- 
cuit court system be good for you, it will be good for us? You have no 
right to exclusive privileges. If you are sovereign States, so are we. By 
the terms of our admission, we are perfectly your equals. We have long 
submitted to the want of this system, from deference to your judgment; 
but the day has now arrived when we demand it from you as our right. 
But there are several other good reasons why the system ought to be ex- 
tended to these States. And, in the first place, the justices of the Supreme 
Court are selected from the very highest order of the profession. There is 
scarcely a lawyer in the United States who would not be proud of an eleva- 
tion to that bench. A man ambitious of honest fame ought not to desire a 
more exalted theatre for the display of ability and usefulness. Besides, the 
salary annexed to this office is sufficient to command the best talents of the 
country. I ask you, sir, is it not a serious grievance for those States to be 
deprived of the services of such a man in their courts? I ask you whether 
it is equal justice, that whilst, in eighteen States of the Union, no man can 
be deprived of his life, his liberty, or his property, by the judgment of a 
circuit court, without the concurrence of two judges, and one of them a jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court, in the remaining six the fate of the citizen is de- 
termined by the decision of a single district judge ? Who are, generally 
speaking, these district judges? In asking this question, I mean to treat 
them with no disrespect. They receive but small salaries, and their sphere 
of action is confined to their own particular districts. There is nothing 
either in the salary or in the station which would induce a distinguished law- 



SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY ACT. 99 

yer, unless under peculiar circumstances, to accept the appointment. And 
yet the judgment of this individual, in six States of the Union, is final and 
conclusive, in all cases of law, of equity, and of admiralty and maritime juris- 
diction, wherein the amount of the controversy does not exceed two 
thousand dollars. Nay, the grievance is incomparably greater. His opinion 
in all criminal cases, no matter how aggravated may be their nature, is final 
and conclusive. A citizen of these States may be deprived of his life, or of 
his character, which ought to be dearer than life, by the sentence of a district 
judge ; against wliich there is no redress, and from which there can be no 
appeal. 

There is another point of view in which the inequality and injustice of the 
present system, in the new States, is very striking. In order to produce a 
final decision, both the judges of a circuit court must concur. If they be 
divided in opinion, the point of difference is certified to the Supreme Court, 
for their decision ; and this, Avhether the amount in controversy be great or 
small. The same rule applies to criminal cases. In such a court, no man can 
be deprived of life, of libert}^, or of property, by a criminal prosecution, with- 
out the clear opmion of the two judges that his conviction is sanctioned by 
the laws of the land. If the question be doubtful or important, or if it be 
one of the first impression, the judges, even when they do not really differ, 
often agree to divide, pro forma, so that the point may be solemnly argued 
and decided in the Supreme Court. Thus, the citizen of every State in which 
a circuit court exists, has a shield of protection cast over him, of which he 
cannot be deprived, without the deliberate opinion of two judges; whilst the 
district judge of the six new Western States must alone finally decide every 
criminal question, and every civil controversy in which the amount in dispute 
does not exceed two thousand dollars. 

In the eastern district of Louisiana, the causes of admiralty and maritime 
jurisdiction decided by the district court must be numerous and important. 
If a circuit court were established for that State, a party who considered 
himself aggrieved might appeal to it from the district court in every case in 
which the amount in controversy exceeded fifty dollai's. At present there is 
no appeal, unless the value of the controversy exceeds two thousand dollars; 
and then it must be made directly to the Supreme Court, a tribunal so far 
remote from the city of New Orleans, as to deter suitors from avaihng them- 
selves of this privilege. 

I shall not further exhaust the patience of the committee on this branch of 
the subject. I flatter myself that I have demonstrated the necessity for 
such an alteration of the existing laws as will confer upon the people of 
Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and of the six new Western States, the same 
benefits from the judiciary, as those which the people of the other States now 
enjoy. 

The great question, then, which remains for discussion is, does the present 
bill present the best plan for accomplishing this purpose, which, under all cir- 
cumstances, can be devised ? It is incumbent upon me to sustain the affirm- 

LofC. 



100 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

ative of this proposition. There have been but two plans proposed to the 
Committee on the Judiciary, and but two can be proposed, Avith the least hope 
of success. The one an extension of the present system, which the bill now 
before the committee contemplates, and the other a resort to the system 
which was adopted in the days of the elder Adams, of detaching the justices 
of the Supreme Court from the performance of circuit duties, and appointing 
circuit judges to take their places. After much reflection upon this subject 
I do not think that the two systems can be compared, without producing a 
conviction in favor of that which has long been established. The system of 
detaching the judges of the Supreme Court from the circuits has been already 
tried, and it has already met the decided hostility of the people of this coun- 
try. No act passed during the stormy and turbulent administration of the 
elder Adams, which excited more general indignation among the people. The 
courts which it established were then, and have been ever since, branded 
with the name of the " midnight judiciary." I am far from being one of those 
who believe the people to be infallible. They are often deceived by the arts 
of demagogues ; but this deception endures only for a season. They are 
always honest, and possess much sagacity. If, therefore, they get wrong, it 
is almost certain they will speedily return to correct opinions. They have 
long since done justice to other acts of that administration, which at the time 
they condemned ; but the feeling against the judiciary established under it 
remains the same. Indeed, many now condemn that system, who were for- 
merly its advocates. In 1826, when a bill, similar in its provisions to the bill 
now before the committee, was under discussion in this House, a motion was 
made by a gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Mercer] to recommit it to the Com- 
mittee on the Judiciary, with an instruction so to amend it, as to discharge 
the judges of the Supreme Court from attendance on the circuit courts, and to 
provide a uniform system for the administration of justice in the inferior courts 
of the United States. Although this motion was sustained with zeal and elo- 
quence and abilit}' by the mover, and by several other gentlemen, yet, when it 
came to the vote, it was placed in a lean minority, and, I believe, was negatived 
without a division. It is morally certain that such a bill could not now be 
carried. It would, therefore, have been vain and idle in the Committee on the 
Judiciary to have reported such a bill. If the Western States should be 
doomed to wait for a redress of their grievances, until public opinion shall 
change upon this subject, it will, probably, be a long time before they will 
obtain relief. 

But, Sir, there are most powerful reasons for believing that public opinion 
upon this subject is correct. What would be the natural consequences of de- 
taching the judges of the Supreme Court from circuit duties? It would 
bring them and their families from the circuits in which they now reside ; 
and this city would become their permanent residence. They would naturally 
come here ; because here, and nowhere else, would they then have official 
business to transact. What would be the probable effect of such a change 
of residence ? The tendency of everything within the ten miles square is 



SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY ACT. IQI 

towards the Executive of the Union. He is here the centre of attraction. 
No matter what poUtical revolutions may take place, no matter who may be 
up or who may be down, the proposition is equally true. Human nature is 
not changed under a Republican Government. We find that citizens of a 
republic are worshippers of power, as well as the subjects of a monarchy. 
Would you think it wise to bring the justices of the Supreme Court from 
their residence in the States, where they breathe the pure air of the country, 
and assemble them here within the very vortex of Executive influence? In- 
stead of being independent judges, scattered over the surface of the Union, 
their feelings identified with the States of which they are citizens, is there no 
danger that, in the lapse of time, you would convert them into minions of 
the Executive? I am far, very far, from supposing that any man, who 
either is or who will be a justice of the Supreme Court, could be actually cor- 
rupted ; but if you place them in a situation where they or their relatives 
would naturally become candidates for Executive patronage, you place them, 
in some degree, under the control of Executive influence. If there should 
now exist any just cause for the complaints against the Supreme Court, that 
in their decisions they are partial to Federal rather than to State authority (and 
I do not say that there is), that which at present may be but an imaginary 
fear might soon become a substantial reality. I would place them beyond 
the reach of temptation. I would suffer them to remain, as they are at pres- 
ent, citizens of their respective States, visiting tliis city annually to discharge 
their high duties, as members of the Supreme Court. This single view of the 
subject, if there were no other, ought, in my judgment, to be conclusive. 

Let us now suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the withdrawal of 
the justices of the Supreme Court from their circuit duties, and their resi- 
dence in this city, Avould produce no such effects, as I apprehend, upon the 
judges themselves ; what would be the probable effect upon pubhc opinion ? 
It has been said, and wisely said, that the first object of every judicial tribu- 
nal ought to be to do justice ; the second, to satisfy the people that justice has 
been done. It is of the utmost importance in this country that the judges of 
the Supreme Court should possess the confidence of the public. This they 
now do in an eminent degree. How have they acquired it? By travelling 
over their circuits, and personally showing themselves to the people of the 
country, in the able and lionest discharge of their high duties, and by their 
extensive intercourse with the members of the profession on the circuits in 
each State, who, after all, are the best judges of judicial merit, and whose 
opinions upon this subject have a powerful influence upon the community. 
Elevated above the storms of faction and of party which have sometimes 
lowered over us, like the sun, they have pursued their steady course, unawed 
by threats, unseduced by flattery. They have thus acquired that public con- 
fidence which never fails to follow the performance of great and good ac- 
tions, when brought home to the personal observation of the people. 

Would they continue to enjoy this extensive pubUc confidence, should they 
no longer be seen by the people of the States, in the discharge of their high 



102 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

and important duties, but be confined, in the exercise of them, to the gloomy 
and vaulted apartment which they now occupy in this Capitol ? Would they 
not be considered as a distant and dangerous tribunal ? Would the people, 
when excited by strong feeling, patiently submit to have the most solemn acts 
of their State Legislatures swept from the statute-book, by the decision of 
judges whom they never saw, and whom they had been taught to consider 
with jealousy and suspicion ? At present, even in those States where their 
decisions have been most violently oj^posed, the highest respect has been felt 
for the judges by whom they were pronounced, because the people have had 
an opportunity of personally knowing that they were both great and good 
men. Look at the illustrious individual who is now the Chief Justice of the 
United States. His decisions upon constitutional questions have ever been 
hostile to the opinions of a vast majority of the people of his own State ; and 
yet with what respect and veneration has he been viewed by Virginia ? Is 
there a Virginian, whose heart does not beat with honest pride when the just 
fame of the Chief Justice is the subject of conversation? They consider him, 
as he truly Is, one of the greatest and best men which this country has ever 
produced. Think ye that such Avould have been the case, had he been con- 
fined to the city of Washington, and never known to the people, except in 
pronouncing judgments in this Capitol, annulling their State laws, and cal- 
culated to humble their State pride ? Whilst I continue to be a member of 
this House, I shall never incur the odium of giving a vote for any change in 
the judiciary system the effect of which would, in my opinion, diminish the 
respect in which the Supreme Court is now held by the people of this 
country. 

The judges whom you would appoint to perform the circuit duties, if able 
and honest men, would soon take the place which the judges of the Supreme 
Court now occupy in the affections of the people ; and the reversal of their 
judgments, when they happened to be in accordance with strong public feel- 
ing, would naturally increase the mass of discontent against the Supreme 
Court. 

There are other reasons, equally powerful, against the Avithdrawal of the 
judges from the circuits. What effect would such a measure probably pro- 
duce upon the ability of the judges themselves to perform their duties? 
Would it not be very unfortunate ? 

No judges upon earth ever had such various and important duties to per- 
form, as the justices of the Supreme Court. In England, whence we have 
derived our laws, they have distinct courts of equity, courts of common law, 
courts of admiralty, and courts in which the civil law is administered. In 
each of these courts, they have distinct judges ; and perfection in any of these 
branches is certain to be rewarded by the honors of that country. The 
judges of our Supreme Court, both on their circuits and in banc, are called 
upon to adjudicate on all these codes. But this is not all. Our Union con- 
sists of twenty-four sovereign States, in all of which there are different laws 
and peculiar customs. The common and equity law have thus been changed 



SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY ACT. 103 

and inflected into a hundred different shapes, and adapted to the various 
wants and opinions of the different members of our confederacy. The judicial 
act of 1789 declares " that the laws of the several States, except where the 
Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States shall otherwise require 
or provide," shall be regarded as rules of decision in the courts of the United 
States. The justices of the Supreme Court ought, therefore, to be acquainted 
with the ever-varying codes of the different States. 

There is still another branch of their jurisdiction, of a grand and imposing 
character, which places them far above the celebrated Amphictyonic council. 
The Constitution of the United States has made them the arbiters between 
conflicting sovereigns. They decide whether the sovereign power of the 
States has been exercised in conformity with the Constitution and laws of 
the United States; and, if tliis has not been done, they declare the laws of 
the State Legislatures to be void. Their decisions thus control the exercise 
of sovereign power. No tribunal ever existed, possessing the same, or even 
similar authority. Now, Sir, suppose you bring these judges to Washington, 
and employ them in banc but six weeks or two months in the year, is it not 
certain that they will gradually become less and less flt to decide upon these 
different codes, and that they will at length nearly lose all recollection of the 
pecuhar local laws of the different States? Every judicial duty which each 
of them would then be required to perform, would be to prepare and deliver 
a few opinions annually in banc. 

The judgment, like every other faculty of the mind, requires exercise to 
preserve its vigor. That judge who decides the most causes, is likely to de- 
cide them the best. Ho who is in the daily habit of applying general princi- 
ples to the decision of cases, as they arise upon the circuits, is at the same 
time qualifying himself in the best manner for the duties of his station on 
the bench of the Supreme Court. 

Is it probable that the long literary leisure of the judges in this city, during 
ten months of the year, would be devoted to searching the two hundred vol- 
umes of jarring decisions of State courts, or in studying the acts of twenty- 
four State Legislatures? The man must have a singular taste and a firm 
resolution who, in his closet, could travel over this barren waste. And even 
if he should, what would be the consequence ? The truth is, such knowledge 
cannot be obtained ; and after it has been acquired, it cannot be preserved, 
except by constant practice. There are subjects which, when the memory 
has once grasped, it retains forever. It has no such attachment for acts of 
Assembly, acts of Congress, and reports of adjudged cases, fixing their con- 
struction. This species of knowledge, under the present system, will always 
be possessed by the judges of the Supreme Court ; because, in the perform- 
ance of their circuit duties, they are j^laced in a situation in which it is daily 
expounded to them, and in which they are daily compelled to decide ques- 
tions arising upon it. Change this system, make them exclusively judges of 
an appellate court, and you render it highly probable that their knowledge of 
the general principles of the laws of their country will become more and 



104 LIFE OF JAMES BUCKANAN. 

more faint, and that they will finally almost lose the recollection of the pe- 
culiar local systems of the different States. " Practice makes perfect," is a 
maxim applicable to every pursuit in life. It applies with peculiar force to 
that of a judge. I think I might appeal for the truth of this position to the 
long experience of the distinguished gentleman from New York, now by my 
side (Mr. Spencer). A man, by study, may become a profound lawyer in 
theory, but nothing except practice can make him an able judge. I call upon 
every member of the profession in this House to say whether he does not 
feel himself to be a better lawyer at the end of a long term, than at the be- 
ginning. It is the circuit employment, imposed upon the judges of England 
and the United States, which has rendered them what they are. In my 
opinion, both the usefulness and the character of the Supreme Court depend 
much upon its continuance. 

I now approach what I know will be urged as the greatest objection to the 
passage of this bill — that it will extend the number of the judges of the 
Supreme Court to nine. If the necessities of the country required that their 
number should be increased to ten, I would feel no objection to such a 
measure. The time has not yet arrived, however, when, in my opinion, such 
a necessity exists. Gentlemen, in considering this subject, ought to take 
those extended views which belong to statesmen. When we reflect upon the 
vast extent of our country, and the various systems of law under which the 
people of the different States are governed, I cannot conceive that nine or 
even ten judges are too great a number to compose our appellate tribunal. 
That number would afford a judicial representation upon the bench of each 
large portion of the Union. Not, Sir, a representation of sectional feelings 
or of the party excitements of the day, but of that peculiar species of legal 
knowledge necessary to adjudicate wisely upon the laws of the different 
States. For example, I ask what judge now upon the bench possesses, or 
can possess, a practical knowledge of the laws of Louisiana? Their system 
is so peculiar, that it is almost impossible for a man to decide correctly upon 
all cases arising under it, who has never been practically acquainted with the 
practice of their courts. Increase the number of judges to nine, and you will 
then have them scattered throughout all the various portions of the Union. 
The streams of legal knowledge peculiar to the different States will then flow 
to the bench of the Supreme Court as to a great reservoir, from whence they 
will be distributed throughout the Union. There will then always be suffi- 
cient local information upon the bench, if I may use the expression, to detect 
all the ingenious fallacies of the bar, and to enable them to decide correctly 
upon local questions. I admit, if the judges were confined to appellate 
duties alone, nine or ten would probably be too great a number. Then there 
might be danger that some of them would become mere nonentities, content- 
ing themselves simply with voting aye or no in the majority or minority. 
There would then also be danger that the Executive might select inefficient 
men for this high station, who were his personal favorites, expecting their in- 
capacity to be shielded from public observation by the splendid talents of 



SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY ACT. 105 

some of the other judges upon the bench. Under the present system we 
have no such danger to apprehend. Each judge must now feel his own per- 
sonal responsibility. He is obliged to preside in the courts throughout his 
circuit, and to bring home the law and the justice of his country to his fellow- 
citizens in each of the districts of which it is composed. Much is expected 
from a judge placed in his exalted station ; and he must attain to the high 
standard of public opinion by which he is judged, or incur the reproach of 
holding an office to which he is not entitled. No man in any station in this 
country can place himself above public opinion. 

Upon the subject of judicial appointments, public opinion has always been 
correct. No factious demagogue, no man, merely because he has sung 
hosannas to the powers that be, can arrive at the bench of the Supreme 
Court. The Executive himself will always be constrained by the force of 
public sentiment, whilst the present system continues, to select judges for 
that court from the ablest and best men of the circuit ; and such has been the 
course which he has hitherto almost invariably pursued. Were he to pursue 
any other, he would inevitably incur popular odium. Under the existing 
system, there can be no danger in increasing the number of the judges to 
nine. But take them from their circuits, destroy their feeling of personal re- 
sponsibility by removing them from the independent courts over which they 
now preside, and make them merely an appellate tribunal, and I admit there 
would be danger, not only of improper appointments, but that a portion of 
them, in the lapse of time, might become incompetent to discharge the duties 
of their station. 

But, Sir, have we no examples of appellate courts consisting of a greater 
number than either nine or ten judges, which have been approved by expe- 
rience? The Senate; of the State of New York has always been their court 
of appeals ; and, notwithstanding they changed their constitution a few years 
ago, so much were the people attached to this court, that it remains un- 
changed. In England, the twelve judges, in fact, compose the court of ap- 
peals. Whenever the House of Lords sits in a judicial character, they are 
summoned to attend, and their opinions are decisive of almost every question. 
I do not pretend to speak accurately, but I doubt whether the House of Lords 
have decided two cases, in opposition to the opinion of the judges, for the 
last fifty years. In England there is also the court of exchequer chamber, 
consisting of the twelve judges, and sometimes of the lord chancellor also, 
into which such causes may be adjourned from the three superior courts, as 
the judges find to be difficult of decision, before any judgment is given upon 
them in the court in which they originated. The court of exchequer cham- 
ber is also a court of appeals, in the strictest sense of the word, in many cases 
which I shall not take time to enumerate. 

I cannot avoid believing that the prejudice which exists in the minds of 
some gentlemen, against increasing the number of the judges of the Supreme 
Court to nine, arises from the circumstance that the appellate courts of the 
different States generally consist of a fewer number. But is there not a 



106 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

striking difference between the cases ? It does not follow that because four 
or five may be a sufficient number in a single State where one uniform system 
of laws prevails, nine or ten would be too many on the bench of the Supreme 
Court, which administers the laws of twenty-four States, and decides questions 
arising under all the codes in use in the civilized world. Indeed, if four or 
five judges be not too many for the court of appeals in a State, it is a strong 
argument that nine or ten are not too great a number for the court of appeals 
of the Union. Upon the whole, I ask, would it be wise in this committee, 
disregarding the voice of experience, to destroy a system which has worked 
well in practice for forty years, and resort to a dangerous and untried experi- 
ment, merely from a vague apprehension that nine judges will destroy the 
usefulness and character of that court, which has been raised by seven to its 
present exalted elevation. 

It will, no doubt, be objected to this bill, as it has been upon a former oc- 
casion, that the present system cannot be permanent, and that, ere long, the 
judges of the Supreme Courts must, from necessity, be withdrawn from 
their circuits. To this objection there is a conclusive answer. We know 
that the system is now sufficient for the wants of the country, and let poster- 
ity provide for themselves. Let us not establish courts which are unnecessary 
in the present day, because we believe that hereafter they may be required to 
do the business of the country. 

But, if it were necessary, I believe it might be demonstrated that ten jus- 
tices of the Supreme Court will be sufficient to do all the judicial business of 
the country which is required of them under the present system, until the 
youngest member of this House shall be sleeping with his fathers. Six judges 
have done all the business of the States east of the Alleghany mountains, 
from the adoption of the Federal Constitution up till this day ; and still their 
duties are not laborious. If it should be deemed proper by Congress, these 
fifteen Eastern States might be arranged into five circuits instead of six, upon 
the occurrence of the next vacancy in any of them, without the least incon- 
venience either to the judges or to the people; and thus it would be rendered 
unnecessary to increase the bench of the Supreme Court beyond nine, even 
after the admission of Michigan and Arkansas into the Union. The business 
of the Federal courts, except in a few States, will probably increase but little 
for a long time to come. One branch of it must, before many years, be en- 
tirely lopped away. I allude to the controversies between citizens of the 
same State claiming lands under grants from different States. This will 
greatly diminish their business both in Tennessee and Kentucky. Besides, 
the State tribunals will generally be preferred by aliens and by citizens of 
other States for the mere recovery of debts, on account of their superior ex- 
pedition. 

I should here close my remarks, if it were not necessary to direct the 
attention of the committee for a few minutes to the details of the bill. And 
here permit me to express my regret that my friend from Kentucky (Mr. 
Wickliffe) has thought proper to propose an amendment to add three, instead 



IMPEACHMENT OF JUDGE PECK. 107 

of two, judges to the Supreme Court. Had a majority of the Committee on 
the Judiciary beheved ten judges, instead of nine, to be necessary, I should 
have yielded my opinion, as I did upon a former occasion, and given the bill 
my support in the House. This I should have done to prevent division 
among its friends, believing it to be a mere question of time : for ten will 
become necessary in a few years, unless the number of the Eastern circuits 
should be reduced to five. 

Another important matter wLicli devolved upon Mr. Bu- 
chanan as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, rela,ted to 
the impeachment of Judge James H. Peck, the United States 
district judge for the district of Missouri. The facts of this 
singuLar case were briefly these: Judge Peck had decided a 
land-cause against certain parties who were represented in his 
court by an attorney and counsellor named Lawless. Lawless 
published in a St. Louis newspaper some comments on the 
Judge's opinion, by no means intemperate in their character. 
The Judge thereupon attached Lawless for a contempt, caused 
him to be imprisoned twenty-four hours in the common jail, and 
suspended him from practice for a period of eighteen months. 
Upon these facts, when brought before the House of Pepresenta- 
tives by Lawless' memorial, there could be but one action. The 
Judiciary Committee voted an impeachment of the Judge, 
and Mr. Buchanan reported their recommendation on the 23d 
of March, 1830. He said that the committee deemed it most 
fair towards the accused not to report at length their reasons 
for arriving at the conclusion that the Judge ought to be im- 
peached, but that they thought it advisable to follow the pre- 
cedent which had been established in the case of the impeach- 
ment of Judge Cliase. A desultory discussion followed upon a 
motion to print the report and the documents, and upon an 
amendment to include the address which it seems that the 
Judo;e had been allowed to make to the committee. But before 
any vote was taken, the Speaker, on the 5th of April, presented 
a memorial from Judge Peck, praying the House to allow him 
to present a written exposition of the facts and law of the case, 
and to call witnesses to substantiate it, or else to vote the im- 
peachment at once on "the partial evidence" which the com- 
mittee had heard. In the course of these proceedings the 
House, if it had not been better guided, might have established 



108 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

an unfortunate precedent. "While the resolution reported by the 
Judiciary Committee for the impeachment of the Judge was 
pending in Committee of the Whole, Mr. Everett moved a 
counter-resolution that there was not sufficient evidence of evil 
intent to authorize the House to impeach Judge Peck of high 
misdemeanors in office. This, in effect, would have converted 
the grand inquest into a tribunal for the determination of the 
whole question of guilt or innocence, upon allegations and proofs 
on the one side and the other. It was opposed by Mr. Storrs, 
Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Wickliife and others, and was negatived. 
The resolution reported by Mr. Buclianan for the impeachment 
of the Judge was then adopted by the Committee of the Whole, 
and reported to the House, after which Mr. Buchan.an demanded 
the yeas and nays, which resulted in a vote of 123 for the im- 
peachment and 49 against it. An article of impeachment was 
prepared by Mr. Buchanan, and was by order of the House 
presented to the Senate. The managers appointed to conduct 
the impeachment on the part of the House were Mr. Buchanan, 
Henry K. Storrs of New York, George McDuffie of South 
Carolina, Ambrose Spencer of New York, and Charles Wickliffe 
of Kentucky. 

The Senate was organized as a court of impeachment on the 
25th of May, 1830 ; but the trial was postponed to the second 
Monday of the next session of Congress. It began on that day, 
December 20, 1830. It was Mr. Buchanan's duty to close the 
case on behalf of the managers, in reply to Mr. Wirt and Mr. 
Meredith of Baltimore, the counsel for Judge Peck. Of Mr. 
Buchanan's speech, I have found no adequate report. It was 
delivered on the 28th of January, 1831. Contemporary notices 
of it show that it was an argument of marked al)ility. His 
positions as given in the Annals of Congress were in substance 
the following : 

He declared that the usurpation of an authority not legally possessed by a 
judge, or the manifest abuse of a power really given, was a misbehavior in 
the sense of the Constitution for which he should be dismissed from office. 
He contended that the conduct of Judge Peck, in the case of Mr. Lawless, 
was in express violation of the Constitution and the laws of the land ; that 
the circumstances of that case were amply sufficient to show a criminal inten- 
tion on his part in the summary punishment of Mr. Lawless ; that in order to 



IMPEACHMENT OF JUDGE PECK. 109 

prove the criminality of his intention it Avas not necessary to demonstrate 
an actually malicious intention, or a lurking revenge; that the infliction 
upon Mr. Lawless of a summary and cruel punishment, for having written 
an article decorous in its language, was itself sufficient to prove the badness 
of the motive ; that the consequences of the Judge's actions Avere indicative 
of his intentions ; that our courts had no right to punish, as for contempts, in 
a summary mode, libels, even in pending causes ; and that if he succeeded, as 
he believed he should, in establishing these positions, he should consider that 
he had a right to demand the judgment of the court against the respondent. 

He took the further position that the pubhcation of Mr. Lawless, under 
the signature of " A Citizen," could not, in a trial upon an indictment for 
libel, be established to be libellous, according to the Constitution and laws of 
the land ; that the paper was, on its face, perfectly harmless in itself; and 
that, so far as it went, it was not an unfliir representation of the opinion of 
Judge Peck. The honorable manager critically and legally analyzed the nine 
last specifications in the publication, to establish these points. He then pro- 
ceeded to sum up and descant upon the testimony produced in the case before 
the court of impeachment, in order to show the arbitrary and cruel conduct 
of Judge Peck; and in a peroration, marked by its ardent eloquence, he de- 
clared that if this man escaped, the declaration of a distinguished politician of 
this cor.utry, that the power of impeachment was but the scarecrow of the 
Constitution, would be fully verified ; that when this trial commenced, he 
recoiled with horror from the idea of limiting, and rendering precarious and 
dependent, the tenure of the judicial ofl&ce, but tliat the acquittal of the re- 
spondent would reconcile him to that evil, as one less than a hopeless and 
remediless submission to judicial usurpation and tyranny, at least so far as 
respected the inferior courts. 

God forbid that the limitation should ever be extended to the Supreme 
Court. Mercy to the respondent would be cruelty to the American people. 

Judge Peck was acquitted by a vote of 21 for the impeach- 
ment and 22 against it, the constitutional vote of two-thirds 
requisite for conviction not being obtained. It is quite ap- 
parent that no party feeling entered into the case. 

[gEO. W. BUCHANAN TO JAMES BUCHANAN ] 

Pittsburgh, November 5, 1830. 
Dear Brother: — 

I had the honor to receive by last night's mail a letter from Mr. Van Buren, 
enclosing me a commission from the President for the district attorneyship. 
This day I will acknowledge its receipt. I am sincerely glad both on your 
account and my own that the President has appointed me. It banishes in a 



110 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

moment all those suspicions which some persons entertained of his coldness 
towards you. It should be my highest ambition to justify the appointment 
by a faithful discharge of official duty. 

My appointment appears to be received very -vvell in this city. It will 
excite some feelings of envy towards me among the young members of the 
bar. My path, however, is very plain. It shall not alter my conduct or 
manner in any respect. 

I am, in haste, your grateful and affectionate brother, 

Geo. "W. Buchanan. 



The most signal service rendered by Mr. Buchanan in the 
21st Congress, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was in 
a minority report made by him on the 24th of January, 1831, 
upon a proposition to repeal the twenty-fifth section of the 
judiciary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court appellate 
jurisdiction, by writ of error to the State courts, in cases where 
the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States are 
drawn in question. A resolution to inquire into the expediency 
of repealing this great organic law having been referred to the 
committee, a majority of the committee made an elaborate re- 
port in tavor of the repeal, through Mr. Smith of South Caro- 
lina, accompanied by a bill to effect the repeal. Mr. Buchanan's 
counter-report, which had the concurrence of two other mem- 
bers, caused the rejection of the bill, by a vote of 138 to 51. I 
know of few constitutional discussions which evince a more 
thorousrh knowledore or more accurate views of the nature of 
our mixed system of Government than this report from the 
pen of Mr. Buchanan. If it be said that the argument is now 
familiar to us, or that it could have been drawn from various 
sources, let it be observed that this document shows that Mr. 
Buchanan was, at this comparatively early period of his life, 
a well-instructed constitutional jurist ; and that while no one 
could originate at that day any novel views of this important 
subject, it was no small merit to be able to set forth clearly and 
cogently the whole substance of such a topic. I think no apology 
is needed for the insertion here of this valuable paper. It may 
be prefaced by an extract from a letter of Mr. Buchanan's 
youngest brother, George W. Buchanan, which shows how it 
was received by the public in Pennsylvania : 



DEFEATS A REPEAL OF THE 25TH SECTION. m 

Pittsburgh, February 4, 1831. 

I have read with the highest degree of satisfaction your able report 

from the minority of the Judiciary Committee. That document will identify 
your name with the most important constitutional question which has been 
presented to the consideration of Congress for many years. It was looked for 
with much anxiety, and is now spoken of by poUticians of every party as a 
lucid and powerful appeal to the patriotism of Congress. If the question was 
to be started, I am sincerely glad that it has arisen while you occupied the 
chair of the Judiciary Committee 

House of Representatives, January 24, 1831. 

The Committee on the Judiciary, to which was referred a resolution of 
the House of Representatives of the 21st ultimo, instructing them "to inquire 
into the expediency of repealing or modifying the twenty-fifth section of an 
act entitled ' An act to establish the judicial courts of the United States,' 
passed the 24th September, 1789," having made a report, accompanied by a 
bill to repeal the same, the minority of that committee, diflering in opinion 
from their associates upon this important question, deem it to be their duty 
to submit to the House the following report : 

The Constitution of the United States has conferred upon Congress certain 
enumerated powers, and expressly authorizes that body " to make all laws 
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying these powers into execu- 
tion." In the construction of this instrument, it has become an axiom, the 
truth of which cannot be controverted, that " the G-eneral Government, though 
limited as to its objects, is supreme with respect to those objects." 

The Constitution has also conferred upon the President, " by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, provided two-thirds of the Senators present 
concur," the power to make treaties. 

By the second section of the sixth article of this instrument it is declared, 
in emphatic language, that " this Constitution, and the laws of the United 
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or 
vphich shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the 
supreme law of the land ; and the judges in every State shall be bound there- 
by, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwith- 
standing." 

The Constitution having conferred upon Congress the power of legislation 
over certain objects, and upon the President and Senate the power of making 
treaties with foreign nations, the next question wdiich naturally presented 
itself to those who framed it was, in what manner it would be most proper 
that the Constitution itself, and the laws and treaties made under its author- 
ity, should be carried into execution. They have decided this question in the 
following strong and comprehensive language : " The judicial power shall 
extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the 
laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under 
their authority." [Art. 3, Sec. 2.] This provision is the only one which could 



112 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHAIS'AN. 

have been made in consistency with the character of the Government estab- 
Hshed by the Constitution. It would have been a strange anomaly had that 
instrument established a judiciary whose powers did not embrace all the laws 
and all the treaties made under its authority. The symmetry of the system 
would thus have been destroyed ; and, in many cases, Congress would have 
had to depend exclusively for the execution of their own laws upon the judi- 
ciary of the States. This principle would have been at war with the spirit 
which pervades the whole Constitution. It was clearly the intention of its 
framers to create a Grovernment which should have the power of construing 
and executing its own laws, without any obstruction from State authority. 
Accordingly, we find that the judicial power of the United States extends, in 
express terms, " to all cases," in law and in equity, arising under the Consti- 
tution, the laws, and the treaties of the United States. This general language 
comprehends precisely what it ought to comprehend. 

If the judicial powers of the United States does thus extend to " all cases" 
arising under the Constitution, the laws, and treaties of the Union, how could 
this power be brought into action over such cases without a law of Congress 
investing the Supreme Court with the original and appellate jurisdiction 
embraced by the Constitution? 

It was the imperious duty of Congress to make such a law, and it is equally 
its duty to continue it ; indeed, without it, the judicial power of the United 
States is limited and restricted to such cases only as arise in the Federal 
courts, and is never brought to bear upon numerous cases, evidently within its 
range. 

When Congress, in the year 1789, legislated upon this subject, they knew 
that the State courts would often be called upon, in the trial of causes, to 
give a construction to the Constitution, the treaties, and laws of the United 
States. What, then, was to be done ? If the decisions of the State courts 
should be final, the Constitution and laws of the Union might be construed 
to mean one thing in one State, and another thing in another State. 

All uniformity in their construction would thus be destroyed. Besides, 
we might, if this were the case, get into serious conflicts with foreign nations, 
as a treaty might receive one construction in Pennsylvania, another in Vir- 
ginia, and a third in New York. Some common and uniform standard of 
construction was absolutely necessary. 

To remedy these and other inconveniences, the first Congress of the 
United States, composed, in a considerable proportion, of the framers of the 
Constitution, passed the 25th section of the judicial act of the 2-ith September, 
1789. It is in the following words : 

" Sec. 25. And be it further enacted, That a final judgment or decree in any 
suit, in the highest court of law or equity of a State, in which a decision in 
the suit could be had, where is drawn in question the validity of a treaty 
or statute of, or an authority exercised under, the United States, and the 
decision is against their validity ; or where is drawn in question the validity 
of a statute of, or an authority exercised under, any State, on the ground 



DEFEATS A EEPEAL OF THE 3oTH SECTION. II3 

of their being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties, or laws of the United 
States, and the decision is in favor of such their validity ; or where is drawn 
in question the construction of any clause of the Constitution, or of a treaty 
or statute of, or commission held under the United States, and the decision is 
against the title, right, privilege, or exemption, specially set up or claimed 
by either party under such clause of the said Constitution, treaty, statute, or 
commission, may be re-examined and reversed, or affirmed in the Supreme 
Court of the United States upon a writ of error, the citation being signed by 
the chief justice, or judge, or chancellor of the court rendering or passing the 
judgment or decree complained of, or by a justice of the Supreme Court of 
the United States in the same manner, and under the same regulations, and 
the writ shall have the same effect, as if the judgment or decree complained 
of had been rendered or passed in a circuit court; and the proceeding upon 
the reversal shall also be the same, except that the Supreme Court, instead of 
remanding the cause for a final decision, as before provided, may, at their 
discretion, if the cause shall have been once remanded before, proceed to a 
final decision of the same, and award execution. But no other error shall be 
assigned or regarded as a ground of reversal in any such case as aforesaid, 
than such as appears on the face of the record, and immediately respects the 
before-mentioned questions of validity, or construction of the said Constitution, 
treaties, statutes, commissions, or authorities, in dispute." 

This section embraces three classes of cases. The first, those in which a 
State court should decide a law or treaty of the United States to be void, 
either because it violated the Constitution of the United States, or for any 
other reason. Ought there not in such cases to be an appeal to the Supreme 
Court of the United States ? Without such an appeal, the General Govern- 
ment might be obliged to behold its own laws and its solemn treaties annulled 
by the judiciary of every State in the Union, without the power of redress. 

The second class of cases is of a different character. It embraces those 
causes in which the validity of State laws is contested, upon the principle 
that they violate the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United 
States, and have, therefore, been enacted in opposition to the authority of the 
" srpreme law of the land." Cases of this description have been of frequent 
occurrence. It has often been drawn into question before the State courts, 
whether State laws did or did not violate the Constitution of the United 
States. Is it not then essential to the preservation of the General Govern- 
ment, that the Supreme Court of the United States should possess the power 
of reviewing the judgments of State courts in all cases wherein they have 
established the validity of a State law in opposition to the Constitution and 
laws of the United States ? 

The third class differs essentially from each of the two first. In the cases 
embraced by it, neither the validity of acts of Congress, nor of treaties, nor of 
State laws is called in question. This clause of the 25th section merely con- 
fers upon the Supreme Court the appellate jurisdiction of construing the Con- 
stitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, when their protection has 
I.— 8 



114 LIFE OF JA^IES BUCHANAN. 

been invoked by parties to suits before the State courts, and has been de- 
nied by their decision. Without the exercise of this power, in cases originat- 
ing in the State courts, the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United 
States would be left to be finally construed and executed by a judicial power, 
over which Congress has no control. 

This section does not interfere, either directly or indirectly, with the inde- 
pendence of the State courts in finally deciding all cases arising exclusively 
under their own constitution and laws. It leaves them in the enjoyment of 
every power which they possessed before the adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution. It merely declares that, as that Constitution established a ne-w form 
of Government, and consequently gave to the State courts the power of con- 
struing, in certain cases, the Constitution, the laws, and the treaties of the 
United States, the Supreme Court of the United States should, to this limited 
extent, but not beyond it, possess the power of reviewing their judgments. 
The section itself declares that no other error shall be assigned or regarded as 
a ground of reversal, in any such case as aforesaid, than such as appears on 
the face of the record, and immediately respects the before-mentioned ques- 
tions of validity or construction of the said Constitution, treaties, statutes, 
commissions, or authorities in dispute. 

The minority of the committee will now proceed to advance, in a more 
distinct form, a few of the reasons whj'-, in their opinion, the 25th section of 
this act ought not to be repealed. 

And, in the first place, it ought to be the chief object of all Governments to 
protect individual rights. In almost every case involving a question before 
a State court under this section of the judiciary act, the Constitution, laws, or 
treaties of the United States are interposed for the protection of individuals. 
Does a citisen invoke the protection of an act of Congress upon a trial before 
a State court which decides that act to be unconstituti onal and void, and ren- 
ders judgment against him? This section secures his right of appeal from 
such a decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. 

When a citizen, in a suit before a State court, contends that a State law, 
by which he is assailed, is a violation of the Constitution of the United States 
and therefore void (if his plea should be overruled), he may bring this ques- 
tion before the Supreme Court of the United States. 

In like manner, when an individual claims any right before a State court 
under the Constitution or laws of the United States, and the decision is 
against his claim, he may appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. 

If this section were repealed, all these important individual rights would 
be forfeited. 

The history of our country abundantly proves that individual States are 
liable to high excitements and strong prejudices. The judges of these States 
would be more or less than men if they did not participate in the feelings of 
the community by which they are surrounded. Under the influence of these 
excitements, individuals, whose rights happen to clash with the prevaiUng 
feelin^ of the State, would have but a slender hope of obtaining justice before 



DEFEATS A REPEAL OF THE 2oTII SECTION. II5 

a State tribunal. There would be the power and the influence of the State 
sovereignty on the one side, and an individual who had made himself obnox- 
ious to popular odium on the other. In such cases, ought the liberty or 
the property of a citizen, so far as he claims the same under the Constitution 
or laws of the United States, to be decided before a State court, without an 
appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, on whom the construc- 
tion of this very Constitution and these laws has been conferred, in all cases, 
by the Constitution? 

The Supreme Court, considering the elevated character of its judges, and 
that they reside in parts of the Union remote from each other, can never be 
hable to local excitements and local prejudices. To that tribunal our citizens 
can appeal with safety and with confidence (as long as the 25th section of 
the judicial act shall remain upon the statute book) whenever they consider 
that their rights, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, have 
been violated by a State court. Besides, should this section be repealed, it 
would produce a denial of equal justice to parties drawing in question the 
Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. In civil actions, the 
plaintiff might then bring his action in a Federal or State court, as he pleased, 
and as he thought he should be most likely to succeed ; whilst the defendant 
would have no option, but must abide the consequences without the power 
of removing the cause from a State into a Federal court, except in the single 
case of his being sued out of the district in which he resides ; and this, al- 
though he might have a conclusive defence under the Constitution and laws 
of the United States. 

Another reason for preserving this section is, that without it there would 
be no uniformity in the construction and administration of the Constitution, 
laws, and treaties of the United States. If the courts of twenty-four distinct, 
sovereign States, each possess the power, in the last resort, of deciding upon 
the Constitution and laws of the United States, their construction may be 
different in every State of the Union. That act of Congress which conforms 
to the Constitution of the United States, and is valid in the opinion of the 
supreme court of Georgia, may be a direct violation of the provisions of that 
instrument, and be void in the judgment of the supreme court of South Car- 
olina. A State law in Virginia might in this manner be declared constitu- , 
tional, whilst the same law, if passed by the Legislature of Pennsyh'ania, 
would be void. Nay, what would be still more absurd, a law or treaty of the 
United States with a foreign nation, admitted to be constitutionally made, 
might secure rights to the citizens of one State, which would be denied to 
those of another. Although the same Constitution and laws govern the 
Union, yet the rights acquired under them would vary with every degree of 
latitude. Surely the framers of the Constitution would have left their work 
incomplete, had they established no common tribunal to decide its own con- 
struction, and that of the laws and treaties made under its authority. They 
are not hable to this charge, because they have given express power to the 
Judiciary of the Union over " all cases, in law and equity, arising under this 



116 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall 
be made, under their authority." 

The first Congress of the United States have, to a considerable extent, 
carried this power into execution by the passage of the judicial act, and it 
contains no provision more important than the 25th section. 

This section ought not to be repealed, because, in the opinion of the minor- 
ity of the Committee on tlie Judiciary, its repeal would seriously endanger 
the existence of this Union. The chief evil which existed under the old con- 
federation, and which gave birth to the present Constitution, was that the 
General Government could not act directly upon the people, but only by 
requisition upon sovereign States. The consequence was, that the States 
either obeyed or disobeyed these requisitions, as they thought proper. The 
present Constitution was intended to enable the Government of the United 
States to act immediately upon the people of the States, and to carry its own 
laws into full execution, by virtue of its own authority. If this section were 
repealed, the General Government would be deprived of the power, by means 
of its own judiciary, to give effect either to the Constitution which called it 
into existence, or to the laws and treaties made under its authority. It would 
be compelled to submit, in many important cases, to the decisions of State 
courts; and thus the very evil which the present Constitution was intended 
to prevent would be entailed upon the people. The judiciary of the States 
might refuse to carry into effect the laws of the United States; and without 
that appeal to the Supreme Court which the 25th section authorizes, these 
laws would thus be entirely annulled, and could not be executed without a 
resort to force. 

This i^osition may be illustrated by a few striking examples. Suppose the 
Legislature of one of the States, believing the tariff laws to be unconstitu- 
tional, should determine that they ought not to be executed within its limits. 
They accordingly pass a law, imposing the severest penalties upon the col- 
lector and other custom-house officers of the United States within their terri- 
tory, if they should collect the duties on the importation of foreign merchan- 
dise. The collector proceeds to discharge the duties of his office under the 
laws of the United States, and he is condemned and punished before a State 
court for violating this State law. Repeal this section, and the decision of 
the State court would be final and conclusive ; and any State could thus 
nullify any act of Congress which she deemed to be unconstitutional. 

The Executive of one of the States, in a message to the Legislature, has 
declared it to be his opinion, that the land belonging to the United States 
within her territory is now the property of the State, by virtue of her sover- 
eign authority. Should the Legislature be of the same opinion, and pass a 
law for the punishment of the land officers of the United States who should 
sell any of the public lands within her limits, this transfer of property might 
be virtually accomplished by the repeal of the 25th section of the judicial act. 
Our land officers might then be severely punished, and thus prohibited by 
the courts of that State from performing their duty under the laws of the 



DEFEATS A REPEAL OF THE 25TH SECTION. II7 

Union, without the possibility of redress in any constitutional or legal form. 
la this manner, the title of the United States to a vast domain, which has 
cost the nation many millions, and which justly belongs to the people of the 
several States, would be defeated or greatly impaired. 

Another illustration might be introduced. Suppose the Legislature of 
Pennsylvania, being of opinion that the charter of the Bank of the United 
States is unconstitutional, were to declare it to be a nuisance, and inflict pen- 
alties upon all its officers for making discounts or receiving deposits. Should 
the courts of that State carry such a law into effect, without the 25th section 
there would be no appeal from their decision ; and the Legislature and courts 
of a single State might thus prostrate an institution established under the 
Constitution and laws of the United States. 

In all such cases, redress can now be peaceably obtained in the ordinary 
administration of justice. A writ of error issues from the Supreme Court, 
which finally decides the question whether the act of Congress was constitu- 
tional or not ; and if they determine in the affirmative, the judgment of the 
State court is reversed. The laws are thus substituted instead of arms, and 
the States kept within their proper orbits by the judicial authority. But if 
no such appeal existed, then, upon the occurrence of cases of this character, 
the General Government would be compelled to determine whether the 
Union should be dissolved, or whether there should be a recurrence to force 
— an awful alternative, which we trust may never be presented. We will not 
attempt further to portray the evils which might result from the abandon- 
ment of the present judicial system. They will strike every reflecting mind. 

It has of late years been contended that this section of the judicial act was 
unconstitutional, and that Congress do not possess the power of investing the 
Supreme Court with appellate jurisdiction in any case which has been finally 
decided in the courts of the States. It has also been contended that, even 
if they do possess this power, it does not extend to cases in which a State is 
a party. On this branch of the question, we would refer the House to the 
very able and conclusive argument of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, in the cases of Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee (1st Wheaton, 304) and 
Cohens vs. the State of Virginia (6 Wheaton, 264) by which the affirmative 
of these propositions is clearly established. It may be proper, however, that 
we should make a few observations upon this part of the question. Those 
who have argued in favor of these positions, assert that the general words of 
the Constitution, extending the judicial power of the Union " to all cases, in 
law and equity," arising under the Constitution and laws of the United 
States, ought, by construction, to be restricted to such cases in law and 
equity as may originate in the courts of the Union. They would thus estab- 
lish a limitation at war with the letter, and, in our opinion, equally at war 
with the spirit of the instrument. Had such been the intention of the framers 
of the Constitution, they well knew in what language to express that intention. 
Had it been their purpose to restrict the meaning of the general language 
which thev had used in the first clause of the section, they could have done 



118 LIFE OF JA^IES BUCHANAN. 

so Tvith much propriety ia the second. This clause, after providing " that, in 
all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those 
in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original juris- 
diction," proceeds to declare " that, in all the other cases before mentioned, the 
Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with 
such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the Congress shall make." 
On the supposition contended for, it is wholly unaccountable that the framers 
of the Constitution did not limit the natural eifect of the words used in the 
first clause, by making the second to read " that, in all the other cases before 
mentioned," arising in the inferior courts of the United States, " the Supreme 
Court shall have appellate jurisdiction." But no such restriction exists ; and, 
from the fair import of the words used in both clauses, the Supreme Court 
possess the power of finally deciding " all cases, in law and equity," arising 
under the Constitution, the laws, and the treaties of the United States, no 
matter whether they may have originated in a Federal or in a State court, 
and no matter whether States or individuals be the parties. 

But it is not our intention to enter into a protracted constitutional argu- 
ment upon the present occasion, because this question has long since been 
put at rest, if any constitutional question can ever be considered as settled in 
this country. The Federalist, which is now considered a text-book in re- 
gard to the construction of the Constitution, and deservedly so, as well from 
the great merit of the work as the high character of its authors, is clear and 
explicit on this subject. After reasoning upon it at some length, the author 
of the 83d number of that production arrives at the following conclusion : 
" To confine, therefore, the general expressions which gave appellate jurisdic- 
tion to the Supreme Court to appeals from the subordinate Federal courts, 
instead of allowing their extension to the State courts, would be to abridge 
the latitude of the terms, in subversion of the intent, contrary to every sound 
rule of interpretation." 

The Federalist, it will be recollected, was written between the formation 
of the Constitution and its adoption by the States. Immediately after its 
adoption. Congress, by passing the 25th section of the judicial act, now sought 
to be repealed, fully confirmed this construction. This appellate jurisdiction 
has ever since been exercised by the Supreme Court in a great variety of 
cases; and we are not aware that the constitutionality of its exercise has 
ever been questioned by the decision of any State court, except in a single 
instance, which did not occur until the year 1815. And even in that case 
(Hunter vs. Fairfax), the judgment of the Supreme Court was carried into 
effect according to the existing law, without endangering the peace of the 
country. 

The last topic to which we would advert is, the claim which has been set 
up to exempt the judgments obtained by the States of this Union, before their 
own courts, in civil and criminal suits, prosecuted in their name, from being 
reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States upon a writ of error. 
Much stress has been laid by those who sustain this clahn, upon the general 



DEFEATS A REPEAL OF THE 25TH SECTION. Hg 

proposition that a sovereign independent State cannot be sued, except by its 
own consent. But does tliis proposition apply, in its extent, to the States of 
this Union. That is the question for discussion. 

We have in this country an authority mucli higher than that of soverei"Ti 
States. It is the authority of the sovereign people of each State. In tlaeir 
State conventions they ratified the Constitution of the United States; and so 
far as that Constitution has deprived the States of any of the attributes of 
sovereignty, they are bound by it, because such was the will of the people. 
The Constitution, thus called into existence by the will of the people of the 
several States, has declared itself, and the laws and treaties which should 
emanate from its authority, to be " the supreme law of the land ; " and the 
judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution 
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Why, then, should a State, who has obtained a judgment in her own 
courts against an individual, in violation of this " supreme law of the land " 
be protected from having her judgment reversed by the Supreme Court of 
the United States ? Is there any reason, either in the Constitution or in 
natural justice, why judgments obtained by a State in her own courts should 
be held sacred, notwithstanding they violated the Constitution and laws of 
the Union, Avhich would not apply, at least with equal force, in favor of 
individual plaintiffs? The Constitution subjects to the review of the Supreme 
Court all cases in law or equity arising under itself, or the laws of the Union. 
It excepts no case bearing this character. Whether the party be a State or 
an individual, all must alike bow to the sovereign will of the peoj^le, expressed 
in the Constitution of the United States. 

In suits brought by a State against an individual in her own courts, there 
is much greater danger of oppression, considering the relative power and in- 
fluence of the parties, than there would be in controversies between individ- 
uals. And are these to be the only cases selected, in which the citizen shall 
not be permitted to protect himself by the Constitution and laws of the Union 
before the Supreme Court of the United States ? Is it not sufBcient that, 
under the Constitution, the States cannot be sued as defendants, without add- 
ing to tliis, by a strained and unnatural construction, the additional privilege 
that the judgments which they may obtain as plaintiffs or prosecutors before 
their own courts, whether right or wrong, shall in all cases be irreversible ? 

We will not repeat the considerations which have been already urged to 
prove that, unless this provision of the Constitution applies to the States, the 
rights of individuals will be sacrificed, all uniformity of decision abandoned, 
and each one of the States will have it in her power to set the Constitution 
and laws of the United States at defiance. 

The eleventh amendment to the Constitution of the United States inter- 
feres in no respect with the principles for which we have contended. It is in 
these words : 

" The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend 
to any suit, in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the 



120 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any 
foreign State." 

Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of the court in the case 
of Cohens vs. Virginia, has given so clear, and in our opinion, so correct an 
exposition of the true construction of the amendment, that we shall, in con- 
clusion, present to the House a few extracts from that opinion, instead of any 
argument of our own. He says that " the first impression made on the mind 
by this amendment is^ that it was intended for those cases, and for those 
only, in which some demand against a State is made by an individual in the 
courts of the Union. If we consider the causes to which it is to be traced, 
we are conducted to the same conclusion. A general interest might well be 
felt, in leaving to a State the full power of consulting its convenience in the 
adjustment of its debts, or of other claims upon it ; but no interest could be 
felt in so changing the relation between the whole and its parts, as to strip 
the Government of the means of protecting, by the instrumentality of its 
courts, the Constitution and laws from active violation. The words of the 
amendment appear to the court to justify and require this construction. 

" To commence a suit, is to demand something by the institution of pro- 
cess in a court of justice; and to prosecute the suit is, according to the com- 
mon acceptation of language, to continue that demand. By a suit commenced 
by an individual against a State, we should understand a process sued out by 
that individual against the State, for the purpose of establishing some claim 
against it by the judgment of a court; and the prosecution of that suit is its 
continuance. Whatever may be the stages of its progress, the actor is still the 
same. Suits had been commenced in the Supreme Court against some of the 
States before the amendment was introduced into Congress, and others might 
be commenced before it should be adopted by the State Legislatures, and might 
be depending at the time of its adoption. The object of the amendment was 
not only to prevent the commencement of future suits, but to arrest the pros- 
ecution of those which might be commenced Avhen this article should form a 
part of the Constitution. It therefore embraces both objects; and its mean- 
ing is, that the judicial power shall not be construed to extend to any suit 
which may be commenced, or which, if already commenced, may be prose- 
cuted against a State, by the citizens of another State. If a suit, brought in 
one court, and carried by legal j^rocesa to a supervising court, be a continua- 
tion of the same suit, then this suit is not commenced nor prosecuted against 
a State. It is clearly, in its commencement, the suit of a State against an 
individual, which suit is transferred to tliis court, not for the purpose of as- 
serting any claim against the State, but for the purpose of asserting a consti- 
tutional defence against a claim made by a State. 

" Under the judiciary act, the efiect of a writ of errbr is simply to bring the 
record into court, and submit the judgment of the inferior tribunal to re- 
examination. It does not, in any manner, act upon the parties ; it acts only 
on the record. It removes the record into the supervising tribunal. Where, 
then, a State obtains a judgment against an individual, and the court render- 



DEFEATS A REPEAL OP THE 25TH SECTION". 12I 

ing such judgment overrules a defence set up under the Constitution or laws 
of the United States, the transfer of this record into the Supreme Court for 
the sole purpose of inquiring whether the judgment violates the Constitution 
or laws of the United States can, with no propriety, we think, be denom- 
inated a suit commenced or prosecuted against the State, whose judgment is 
so far re-examined. Nothing is demanded from the State. No claim against 
it, of any description, is asserted or prosecuted. The party is not to be re- 
stored to the possession of anything. Essentially, it is an. appeal on a sino-le 
point ; and the defendant who appeals from a judgment rendered against him, 
is never said to commence or prosecute a suit against the plaintiifj who has 
obtained the judgment. The writ of error is given rather than an appeal, 
because it is the more usual mode of removing suits at common law and 
because, perhaps, it is more technically proper, where a single point of law 
and not the whole case, is to be re-examined. But an appeal might be o-iven 
and might be so regulated as to effect every purpose of a writ of error. The 
mode of removal is form, not substance. Whether it be by writ of error or 
appeal, no claim is asserted, no demand is made by the original defendant; 
he only asserts the constitutional right to have his defence examined by that 
tribunal whose province it is to construe the Constitution and laws of the 
Union. 

" The only part of the proceeding which is in any manner personal is the 
citation. And what is the citation ? It is simply notice to the opposite 
party that the record is transferred into another court, where he may appear, 
or decline to appear, as his judgment or inclination may determine. As the 
party who has obtained a judgment is out of court, and may, therefore, not 
know that his cause is removed, common justice requires that notice of the 
fact should be given him : but this notice is not a suit, nor has it the effect of 
process. If the party does not choose to appear, he cannot be brought into 
court, nor is his failure to appear considered as a default. Judgment cannot 
be given against him for his non-appearance ; but the judgment is to be re- 
examined, and reversed or affirmed, in hke manner as if the party had 
appeared and argued his cause. 

" The point of view in which this writ of error, with its citation, has been 
considered uniformly in the courts of the Union, has been well illustrated by 
a reference to the course of this court in suits instituted by the United States. 
The universally received opinion is, that no suit can be commenced or prose- 
cuted against the United States ; that the judiciary act does not authorize such 
suits; yet writs of error, accompanied with citations, have uniformly issued 
for the removal of judgments in favor of the United States into a superior 
court, where they have, like those in favor of an individual, been re-examined, 
and affirmed or reversed. It has never been suggested that such writ of 
error was a suit against the United States, and therefore not within the juris- 
diction of the appellate court. 

" It is, then, the opinion of the court that the defendant who removes a 
judgment rendered against him by a State court into this court, for the pur- 



122 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

pose of re-examining the question whether that judgment be in violation of 
the Constitution or laws of the United States, does not commence or prose- 
cute a suit against the State, whatever may be its opinion, where the effect of 
the writ may be to restore the party to the possession of a thing which he 
demands." 

All which is respectfully submitted. 

James Buchanan, 
Wm. W. Ellsworth, 
E. D. White. 

It was Mr. Buchanan's intention to retire from public life at 
the close of this session of Congress in March, 1831. But in 
the early part of February, without his previous knowledge, a 
movement was set on foot in Pennsylvania to bring him for- 
ward as the candidate of that State for the Yice-Presidency at 
the next election, on the ticket with General Jackson, whose 
re-election to the Presidency was already anticipated by his 
party. As soon as information of this pui-pose reached Mr. 
Buchanan, he did what he could to discourage it, as will appear 
from the following letter to one of his Pennsylvania friends and 
neighbors : 

[jAMES BUCHANAN TO GEORGE PLITT, ESQ ] 

Washington, February 18, 1831. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received your kind letter of the 7th instant and the Chester County 
Democrat of the 8th by the same mail ; and I confess the information which 
they contained was wholly unexpected. I can say nothing upon the subject 
to which they refer, unless it be to express a profound and grateful sense of 
the kindness and partiality of those of my friends in Chester County who 
would elevate me to a station to which I have never aspired. I cannot flatter 
myself, for a single moment, that the people of the State will respond to 
a nomination which I feel has been dictated in a great degree by personal 
friendship ; and I shall retire to private life, after the close of the present ses- 
sion, without casting one lingering look behind. As a private citizen I shall 
always remember with the deepest sensibility the many favors which I have 
received from the people of the district whom I have so long represented, 
perfectly convinced that they have already bestowed upon me quite as many 
honors as I have ever deserved. 

I sent you by yesterday's mail a copy of the correspondence between the 
President and Vice-President. Its publication has not produced the sensa- 
tion here which was expected. I think it will not injure General Jackson in 



WISHES TO RETIRE FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 123 

the estimation of his friends in Pennsylvania. Its effect, however, -will be 
still more to divide the personal friends of Mr. Crawford and Mr. Calhoun. 

The speech which I made upon Peck's trial will probably not appear until a 
full report of the case shall be published. The commendations which have 
been bestowed upon it, both here and elsewhere, have been of a character so 
far beyond its merits that I fear the public will be disappointed upon the 
appearance in print. 

I would suggest to you the propriety of considering this letter confidential 
so far as it regards myself. The subject is of a nature so delicate, and any- 
thino' I can say upon it is so liable to misconstruction, that I should not have 
answered your letter, had I not felt that you have always deserved my 
friendship, and that I might rely with confidence on your discretion. 

From your friend, 

J^vMEs Buchanan. 

P. S. — What is now the state of anti-masonry in your county ? 

The truth is that a longer continuance in public life did not 
accord with Mr. Buchanan's plans. His professional income 
had fallen to the low rate of about $2000 per annum, and he 
determined to restore it to what it had previously been, and 
to take his cliances for raising it still higher. 

He liad many qualifications for great success at the bar : com- 
petent learning, untiring industry, a ready and pleasing address, 
an uncommon reasoning power, and a reputation of perfect 
integrity. Had he been impelled by the wants of a family to 
devote himself exclusively to his profession, there can be no 
doubt that he would have risen in it to great eminence. His 
talents were not of that order which would have enabled him 
to unite in his own person the very difi'erent functions of a 
statesman and a lawyer ; a union which has been exhibited in 
a very marked manner by only one person in America, and 
perhaps by no one in England. But my estimate of Mr. Bu- 
chanan's abilities leads me to say, that if he had not at this 
period of his life been again drawn into a political career, 
he would have ranked among the first lawyers of his time. He 
must have soon engaged in the forensic discussion of constitu- 
tional questions. He had very early imbibed a deep reverence 
for the Constitution of the United States, and his turn of mind 
would have adapted him to the handling of questions such as 
were then arising and are likely long to arise upon its interpre- 



124 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

tation. As be grew older and his sphere of professional em- 
ployment became widened, he must have been found at the bar 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, if not as the peer 
of Webster and Pinkney, at least as the peer of many against 
whom those great advocates had to put forth their strength. But 
from such a professional career Mr. Buchanan was drawn away, 
not by the prospect of the Vice-Presidency, but by the unex- 
pected offer of the mission to Russia, an account of which will 
be found in the next chapter. 

[from GEORGE W. BtJCHANAN.] 

Pittsburgh, March 4, 1830. 
Dear Brother: — 

I am much pleased to observe from the U. 8. Telegraph of the 25th 
uUirao that you have taken a manly stand on the constitutional side of the 
Indian question. In this pleasure there is no doubt a spice of personal vanity, 
as your sentiments, so far as they can be inferred from the debate, are in per- 
fect accordance with my own. It is a question which has produced an unac- 
countable excitement in our city. Every word on the subject is devoured 
with wonderful avidity ; and I can assure you that you did not put too high 
an estimate on public feeling when you moved for the printing of^ere thousand 
copies of the report. As public opinion is yet unsettled, it is important that 
the report of the committee, if temperate and decided, should have an exten- 
sive circulation. 

I have read your speech on the Judiciary with great interest and advan- 
tage. The legal gentlemen in our city have highly complimented botli its 
style and research. The best evidence of its effect is, that all those with 
whom I have conversed on the subject are decidedly in favor o^your hill. 

Anti-masonry is still flourishing. I do not know the state of feeling in the 
eastern section of Pennsylvania, but I am now perfectly convinced that no 
western county will return a mason to the next Legislature. Strong, how- 
ever, as anti-masonry is, much of its apparent strength is borrowed from ex- 
trinsic circumstances. In this city, for instance, many persons are anxious 
to be rid of a set of rulers who have managed with so much political dexterity 
as to control the destinies of this county for many years. Tliese men happen 
to he masons. No other hobby could be mounted with the same prospect 
of success. The honest anti-masons, the old Adams men, and the dis- 
appointed office-seekers are easily induced to unite their influence against the 
" powers that be." The motley materials are thus thrown into one caldron 
and stirred up into a dangerous compound. These remarks I have made to 
account for the extraordinary strength of anti-masonry in this quarter 

I am obliged to you for the salutary counsel contained in your last letter. 
I believe that a whole volume of advice (both moral and political) is contained 



PROPOSED FOR THE VICE-PRESIDENCY. 125 

in that single direction, " Be wise as the serpent, but harmless as the dove." 

My health is very good. 

Your grateful and afTectionate brother, 

Geo. W. Buchanan. 

It appears, however, that a meeting was held at Lancaster 
in March, at wliich he was nominated for the Yice-Presidency, 
with what effect may be learned from the following letters 
written by his brother George from Pittsburgh : 

[GEORGE W. BUCHANAN TO JAMES BUCHANAN.] 

Pittsburgh, Marcli 23, 1831. 
Dear Brother: — 

I have just read with great pleasure the proceedings of the Lancaster 
meeting which nominated you for tlie Vice-Presidency. Whether success 
shall crown the exertions of your friends or not, no public man can receive 
so flattering and precious a testimonial as the unanimous and unsolicited voice 
of his neighbors and acquaintances. In this part of the State, the idea seems 
to take very well. Both this county and Washington will, I think, hold 
meetings in your favor. I saw the editor of the Manv/adurer this morn- 
ing and ascertained that he will be disposed to take a prominent part. The 
Democrat will probably not be unfavorable. The editor, however, is a very 
timid creature. 

On Thursday last I was so unfortunate as to fall and break my arm. 
The pain has subsided in a great degree, and I think that my arm will be 
restored in a short time to its wonted strength and action. I can now attend 
to any business that does not require the use of both hands. 

I write under a feeling of great inconvenience, and will therefore close. 
Your grateful and affectionate brother, 

Geo. W. Buchanan. 

PlTTSBUKGH, April 29, 1831. 
Dear Brother: — 

I have been absent from home in attendance upon a sale of United States 
property at Uniontown for a week past. I succeeded in effecting a very 
good disposition of the property. The Government, I have no doubt, will 
approve my proceedings. 

I find that in every county in which I have been, your nomination for the 
Vice-Presidency is very popular. In Fayette and Washington there will 
scarcely be a division of sentiment. Still, however, it is thought proper to 
suspend all public proceedings in your favor till the time of holding their reg- 
ular Democratic meetings in the summer. That course will also be adopted 
in this county. Every leading Jacl^son imliiidan here, with the exception of 



126 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

one or two Ingham men, is favorable to your nomination. It will however 
be probably better to wait for a further expression of public opinion at 
the regular meetings of the party throutjlioid the State. I observe that in the 
Kentuchj Gazette your name is placed on the Democratic ticket, under Gen- 
eral Jackson's. 

It is believed here that the appointment of Attorney-G-eneral has been ten- 
dered to you. If so, I hope that you will accept it. It is a most honorable 
station, and free from that abuse which attaches to the Secretaryships. Will 
Van Buren be a candidate for the Vice-Presidency ? 

My arm is not yet so far restored as to be of any use. I trust, however, 
that the weakness is only of a temporary nature. Jily health, in other respects, 
is good. 

I am your grateful brother, 

Geo. W. Buchanan. 

Mr. Buclianan returned to Lancaster after this meeting Lad 
been held. His nomination to the Yiee-Presidency continued 
to be agitated in other parts of Pennsylvania, and in June a 
great meeting of the supporters of General Jackson was held 
at Williamsport, of which George Buchanan gives the follow- 
ing account : 

[GEORGE W. BUCHANAN TO JAMES BUCHANAN.] 

Pittsburgh, June 15, 1831. 
Dear Brother : — 

I arrived here on Thursday. The heat was so oppressive on horseback 
that I sold my horse at Bellefonte, and returned in the stage. The journey 
has, in a very great degree, restored my health. 

The Jackson meeting at Williamsport was an exceedingly respectable one. 
Fifteen counties were represented. There can be no doubt that you were the 
Pennsylvanian to whom the resolution respecting the Vice-Presidency was 
intended to point. I have every reason to believe that your name would 
have been inserted by an almost unanimous vote, if Mr. Potter, from Gen- 
tler, had not been detained at home by the illness of his wife. He would 
have offered a resolution nominating you; and I can say, from information of 
the most undoubted credit, that at least two-thirds of all the jurors would have 
warmly sustained it. Mr. "Ward, editor of the Susquehanna Register, and 
Mr. Youngman, editor of the Union Times, with both of whom I became in- 
timately acquainted, are decidedly favorable to your nomination. They are 
intelligent young men, and have, in a warm and flattering manner, solicited 
my correspondence. 

In the AVestern country, I find that the Ingham faction is extremely weak. 
Out of Bradford County, and apart from their family connections, they appear 
to have no friends in the West. The people in our district speak very favorably 



PROPOSED FOR THE VICE-PRESIDENCY. 127 

of Mr. Mahlenburg as the next Governor, and, I assure you, I did nothing to 
discountenance that feehng. The popularity of the present Governor has 
been injured by the appointment of General McKean, the proposition to tax 
coal and the character of certain county appointments. The resolution 
adopted at our meeting, and opposing General Jackson's course in the Cabi- 
net affair, was intended as a direct censure upon Messrs. Ingham, &c. Owing 
to the relation I bore to you and to General Jackson, I determined to take 
no active part in the meeting. 

I should like very much to see you and hold a long conversation on matters 
and thino-s. In July I shall endeavor to visit Franklin County, and, if you 
should be unable to meet me there, I will extend my journey to Lancaster. 

Governor Wolf left our city tliis morning for Erie. He was here at the 
time of my arrival, and, in company with several ladies and gentleman, I es- 
corted him to Economy. He was exceedingly well received by the people of 
that singular village. His plain manners and German language endeared him 
very much to Eaflf and his Avhole Society. The Governor treated me with 
great attention, and evinced a disposition to be very familiar. His daughter, 
hcfwexQv, pleased my fancy much more than the old gentleman himself. She 
is a very interesting lady, and has well nigh stolen my heart. 

I observe that the newspapers are determined to give you some office. 

They now make you Minister to Russia. Is this report true ? If so, it will 

then become your duty to consider ivhat sort of a Secretary your brother 

George tvould make. It would be a very interesting time to visit Europe.* 

I remain your grateful and affectionate brother, 

Geo. W. Buchanan. 



*This allusion to the Secretaryship of the Russian Mission was, of course, merely 
playful. George Buchanan had no thought of seeking this appointment, nor would his 
brother have asked for it. 



CHAPTER YII. 

1831— 1833. 

JOKN Il.\J^DOLPH OF ROANOKE MADE MINISTER TO RUSSIA — FAILURE OP 

MR. Randolph's health — the mission offered to mr. buchanan — 

HIS mother's OPPOSITION TO HIS ACCEPTANCE — EMBARKS AT NEW 
YORK AND ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL — LETTERS FROM ENGLAND — JOUR- 
NEY TO ST. PETERSBURG CORRESPONDENCE "WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 

A FTER. General Jackson became President in March, 1829, 
~l\. he determined to offer the Mission to Russia to " John 
Randolph of Roanoke." This offer was made in September of 
that year, and was then accepted ; but the nomination was not 
submitted to the Senate until the following May. It was con- 
firmed without opposition from any quarter.* Before he sailed, 
Mr. Randolph had leave granted him by the President to spend 
the following winter in the south of Europe, if the state of his 
health should require it. lie remained at St. Petersburg only 
long enough to be accredited. His constitution was too far im- 
paired to admit of his encountering the rigors of a Russian 
winter. He left the affairs of the legation in the hands of Mr. 
Clay, the Secretaiy, and went to England. 

In his annual message in December (1830), the President 
connnunicated to Congress the fact of Mr. Randolph's necessary 
absence from his post, on leave, and said that the public inter- 
ests in that quarter would still be attended to by the Minister, 



♦Colonel Benton, writinj:: to Mr. Randolph on the 26th of May, said : "Your nomination 
came up this morning, and was acted upon with great promptness. Tyler called it, but be- 
fore it was called it was understood that the opposition would support it unanimously. 
This they did with some degree of €?np)xssement. Several voices from their side called for 
the question as soon as T3'ler sat down, among them Louisiana Johnston, and Webster, 
■were most audible. There were no yeas and nays, and nothing said by any person but Tyler, 
and only a few-words by him, and those of course complimentary ; the opposition evidently 
wishing to be observed as supporting it. Everybody is asking me whether you will accept. 
I tell tliem what surprises many, but not those who know you, that not a word between you 
and me had ever passed on such a subject." 



THE RUSSIAN MISSION. Igg 

through the Secretary. When the annual appropriation bill 
came before the House of Representatives in January (1S31), a 
long and acrimonious discussion took place upon a motion to 
strike out the salary of the Minister to Russia. It was con- 
tended that the Mission was actually, if not technically, vacant ; 
and it was charged that the appointment of Mr. Randolph, with 
the understanding that he might leave his post at his own dis- 
cretion, was a "job." To this it was answered by the friends 
of the Administration that the responsibility for his appointment 
lay with the President and the Senate ; that in the Senate the 
opposition entirely approved of the appointment ; and that for 
the House to refuse to pay the salary of a Minister because he 
was absent from his post on leave given by the President, 
would be highly improper. In the course of this debate, Mr. 
Buchanan made a temperate and judicious speech, in which he 
defended the appointment. The result was that the appropria- 
tion was retained in the bill and the bill was passed.* 

It became necessary, however, in the spring of this year, for 
the President to recall Mr. Randolph and to select his successor. 
In those days, the public men of the country did not propose 
themselves for such appointments. The first intimation that 
reached Mr. Buchanan of the President's wish to make him 
Minister to Russia, came to him in a letter from a confidential 
friend of the President. 



* In this debate, it was charged that the President's Message was written by Mr. Van 
Buren, the Secretary of State, and that General Jackson was incapable of writing his official 
papers. It is very probably true that he did not write some of them. His Proclamation 
against the Nulliflers is generally assumed to have been written by Edward Livingston. 
But that General Jackson was capable of writing well, there can be no doubt. I remember, 
however, that in my youth, during his Presidency, it was generally believed in New England 
among his political opponents that he was an entirely illiterate man, who could not write an 
English sentence grammatically, or spell correctly. This belief was too much encouraged 
by persons who knew better ; and it was not until many years afterwards that I learned how 
unfounded it 'vas. There now lie before me autograph letters of General Jackson, written 
wholly with his own hand, and written and punctuated with entire correctness, and with no 
small power of expression. Some of them have been already quoted. These have been, 
and others will be, printed without the slightest correction. The handwriting is sometimes 
rather better, for example, than Mr. Webster's. There is not a single erasure in any one of 
the letters, and but one very trifling interlineation. The spelling is perfectly correct through- 
out. General Jackson wrote better English than Washington : and as to King George HI, 
the General was an Addison, in comparison with his majesty. 

When General Jackson visited New England as President, in the summer of 18.33, the 
Degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard College. This was much ridiculed 
at the time, in that neighborhood, on account of his supposed illiteracy. 
I— 9 



130 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[major EATON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) WAsniNoroN, May 31, 1831. 

Dear Sir: — 

Where are you, and what doing ? I cannot tell, having heard nothing 
from you since the adjournment of Congress. That you are doing well, 
though, I have no doubt and earnestly hope. 

I introduce myself to you now at the request and by the direction of the 
President. The Mission to St. Petersburg is expected shortly to become 
vacant. It will afford the President pleasure to confide this trust to you, if it 
shall suit your convenience to accept it. He desires me to make known his 
wishes to you and to solicit an answer. It is at the present an important and 
a highly interesting part of the world. For reasons not material now to be 
explained, the President desires that you will consider this communication 
entirely of a confidential character. 

With great respect, 

J. H. Eaton. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MAJOR EATON.] 

Lancaster, June 4, 1831. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received your letter last evening, offering me, " by the direction of the 
President," the Mission to St. Petersburg. I feel with the deepest sensibility 
this pledge of the kindness of the President, and the recollection of it shall 
ever be engraven on my grateful memory. My attachment for him, both 
personal and political, has been of the warmest character, and he has now 
engrafted upon that feeling a strong sense of individual gratitude. 

There is but a single circumstance which induces me to doubt whether I 
ought to accept the Mission. I wish to be placed in no public station in 
which I cannot discharge my duty with usefulness to the country and honor 
to the administration of General Jackson. Ignorant as I now am of the 
French language, I doubt whether I could acquire a sufficient knowledge of 
it in proper time to enable me to hold that free communion with the political 
circles in St. Petersburg which I consider essential to the able discharge of 
the duties of a foreign minister. I have much business now on hand which 
I could not immediately leave without doing serious injury to individuals who 
have confided in me. Will you be so kind as to inform me at what time the 
President would think the public interest required me to leave the country in 
case I should accept the Mission ? 

Please to remember me to the President in the strongest terms. Accept 
my thanks for your uniform kindness, and present my respects to Mrs. 
Eaton. I remain 

Sincerely your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



THE RUSSIAN MISSION OFFERED TO BUCHANAN. 131 

[baton to BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Washington City, June 7, 1831. 

Dear Sir: — 

I have just received your letter, and will show it to the President, whom 
I shall see during the day. The difficulty you suggest can no doubt be 
remedied. Mr. E. is not expected to return before July or August; it would 
then be too late in the season to reach St. Petersburg by water transporta- 
tion. To depart in September would create the necessity of travelling over 
land from Hamburg or Havre. This, I am confident, the President would 
not ask of you, I feel satisfied that he will grant the indulgence asked and 
defer your departure until next spring. But I will see him, and if I be 
wrong in this, I will again write you to-morrow; — if no letter come, you 
may understand by the silence that my suggestions are approved by the 
President. 

Very truly yours, 

J. H. Eaton. 

P. S. I will write to you to-morrow or the next day, at any rate. 

3 o'clock. I sent your letter to the President. In answer he thus writes: 
" Say to Mr. Buchanan that he will not be required to go out before next 
winter or spring, that he may reach St. Petersburg on the breaking up of 
the ice — unless something more than is now expected arises, when the Presi- 
dent will rely upon Mr. Buchanan's patriotism to proceed. He will have 
sufficient time to arrange his affairs." 



[BUCHANAN TO EATON.] 

Lancaster, June 12, 1831. 
Dear Sir: — 

After the receipt of your last kind letter of the 7th inst., with the extract 
from the President's note to you annexed, granting me all the indulgence I 
could have desired, I can no longer hesitate to accept the Russian Mission. I 
fear that the necessary arrangements, both of a professional and private 
character, which I must soon begin to make preparatory to leaving the coun- 
try — together with the study of the French language, which I intend to com- 
mence — may disclose the fact that this Mission has been offijred to me and 
accepted. Indeed, from the publications in the newspapers it was believed 
by many before I had any intimation that such an intention existed on the 
part of the President. Is there any reason why I should for the present 
defer these preparations? 

Please to present my grateful compliments to the President, and believe 
me to be 

Sincerely your friend, 

James Buchanan. 

Hon. John H. Eaton. 



132 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[baton to BUCHANAN.] 

Washington, June 15, 1831. 
Dear Sir: — 

On receiving your letter this morning I referred it to the President, and 
he has returned me a hasty note, which I enclose to you. It is quite like 
himself, candid and frank. 

With great regard, yours, 

J. H. Eaton, 

[eATON to JACKSON.] 

Dear Sir : — 

I send you a letter to-day received from Mr. Buchanan. What shall I say 
to him? 

Yours, 

J. H. Eaton, 

[jACKSON TO EATON.] 

Dear Sir : — 

Say to him in reply, to go on and make his preparations and let the news- 
papers make any comments that they may think proper, and mind them not. 
It is only necessary that he should not give them any information on this sub- 
ject — the journals will say what they please, and be it so. 

Yours, 

A, J. 

[LIVINGSTON TO BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Washington, August 2, 1831. 

My Dear Sir :— 

Mr. Taney having given me your letter of the 2Gth July, with a request 
that I would communicate it to the President, I did so; and he has di- 
rected me to say that it was not deemed proper to make the offer of the 
Russian Mission public until Mr, Randolph's return should make the place 
vacant, and that when that event happened he would direct me to write to 
you. 

The former communications were made to you while I was confined to 
my bed, and did not pass through my Department, or they would have been 
put in a shape that would have spared you any embarrassment on the 
subject. 

I am, my dear Sir, with the greatest regard and esteem, 

Your friend and humble servant, 

Edw. Livingston.* 



* Mr. Livingston became Secretary of State in May, 1831, in the place of Mr. Van Buren, 
who resigned in order to be made Minister to England, a post to which he was nominated 
by the President, but he was not confirmed by the Senate. 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 133 

[tANEY to BUCHANAN.] 

(Confidential.) Washington, August 2, 1831. 

My Dear Sir : — 

I received your letter and immediately waited on Mr. Livingston, and 
placed it in his hands, requesting him to ascertain whether your ap- 
pointment and acceptance might not at once be made public. Mr. Living- 
ston informed me to-day that he had seen the President, and that the only 
reason for desiring that nothing should be said about it was that Mr. 
Kandolph had not yet returned, and that he did not wish that your ap- 
pointment should be formally made and publicly announced until Mr. Ran- 
dolph arrived in this country. The Secretary of State will, however, write 
to you himself to-day. I omitted to ask him when Mr. Randolph was ex- 
pected, but he will probably mention the time in his letter to you. I can 
readily imagine that the present state of things may be rather embarrass- 
ing to you, and hope it will not be long before an appointment which I 
am quite sure will give great satisfaction to our friends, can be officially 
made known. 

Mr. Livingston intends to go to New York in the course of this week 
in order to have a conference with Mr. McLane and Mr. Van Buren before 
the latter sails for England. He Avill leave Wasliington on Thursday, unless 
he should learn in the mean time that Mr. McLane is on his way to this 
place. And as an interview with him on your affairs would, I presume, 
be agreeable to you, perhaps you may make it convenient to meet him in 
New York. Governor Cass has accepted the appointment of Secretary of 
War, and was to leave home on the first of this month, and expected to 
be here before the 15th. 

Wishing you, my dear Sir, a pleasant excursion, and regretting that my 
engagements here will prevent me from joining you at Saratoga, I am 
Most truly your friend and obedient servant, 

R. B. Taney. 

There was one member of Mr. Buchanan's family who was 
decidedly opposed to his acceptance of this mission. This was 
his mother, then at the age of 65. It would be interesting to 
know what was the special reason which led this excellent and 
intelligent lady to feel as she did about this appointment. 
Whether it was anything more than a presentiment that she 
should never see him again after he had crossed the ocean, or 
whether she thought that it would not be wise for him to ven- 
ture in a new path of public life, can only be inferred from the 
following letter, which she wrote to him after his decision had 
been made : 



13J: LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[iMRS. BUCHANAN TO HER SON JAMES.] 

October 21 [1831]. 
My De.vr Son: — 

With Harriet's permission, I write you a few lines in her letter. I feel 
deep solicitude respecting your mission to Russia, and perhaps I am too late 
in laying [before you] my objections, which, in my estimation, are formid- 
able. Would it not be practicable, even now, to decline its acceptance? 
Your political career has been of that description which ought to gratify 
your ambition ; and as to pecuniary matters, they are no object to you. If 
you can, consistently with the character of a gentleman and a man of honor, 
decline, how great a gratification it would be to me. May God of His infi- 
nite goodness, dispose of us in whatever way may promote His glory and 
secure our everlasting felicity, is the prayer of your affectionate 

MoxnER. 

P. S. — At what time do you intend paying us that visit, previous to your 
departure from the country which gave you birth, and I expect, to me, the 
last visit ? Do not disappoint me, but certainly come. 

There is no record of this visit, which was indeed the last, 
but which was undoubtedly made. One of the strongest 
reasons that weighed with Mr. Buchanan against his acceptance 
of this mission was his mother's advanced age, and the proba- 
bility that he might never see her again. In the latter part of 
Angust and the early part of September, he was absent from 
Lancaster on a journey to the East, on account of his health. 
On his return, he wrote a private letter to General Jackson ; 
part of which, however, is wanting in the copy before me : 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

Lancaster, September 10, 1831. 
Dear General: — 

Having had the bilious fever severely for the last three autumns, I was 
advised by my physicians to go to the North this summer, as the best means 
of preventing its recurrence. Accordingly, I have been Avandering about 
among the New Yorkers and the Yankees for several weeks past. I reached 
home but last night. Whilst I was at Boston, the anti-masonic letter of Mr. 
Adams made its appearance. This folly, although it caps the climax, is in 
perfect character with the history of his conduct. It is a melancholy specta- 
cle to see a man who has held the first office acting as he has done. It is 



APPOINTED MINISTER TO RUSSIA. I35 

now believed seriously, even by his former friends, that he is courting the anti- 
raasonic nomination. lie and Rush are a par nobile fratrum. I was happy to 
find everywhere that the little specks which appeared on the political horizon 
— about the time you changed your Cabinet — have been entirely dissipated. 
It could not have been otherwise. In the opinion of your friends, the present 
Cabinet is just such a one as it ought to be. In this State, your strength has 
alarmed those who evidently wished to abandon you, and they are now the 
loudest in your support. It not being in their power to affect you, they are 
pushing another purpose with all their might. They are strenuously opposed 
to a national convention to nominate a Vice-President ; and through the 
inadvertence of our friends who are without suspicion, it appears to be set- 
tled that a State convention, which will meet to nominate a Governor on the 
4th of March next, will also select a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. This 
nomination ought to be made by a Jackson convention on the 8th of January. 
The consequence will be that the State administration — on account of its 
extensive patronage and the interest felt by all the State office-holders in 
sending their particular friends to the convention — will probably be able to 
control the nomination. George M. Dallas is unquestionably the candidate 
of the State administration, and of all those who are the friends of Mr. 
Ingham and Calhoun. Now I have no wish to be a candidate for the Vice- 
Presidency ; on the contrary, my nomination was put up without my con- 
sent, and it is my intention to decline, but I desire to do it 

[The residue of tlie original letter is lost.] 

Althongli Mr. Buchanan had accepted the offer of the Kus- 
sian Mission, his nomination could not be submitted to the 
Senate until after that body had assembled in December, 1831. 
It was acted upon in the Senate in the early part of January, 
1832, and from the following letter from Mr. Livingston, the 
Secretary of State, it appears that the nomination was con- 
firmed by an unanimous or nearly unanimous vote : 

[LIVINGSTON TO BUCHANAN.] 

(Private and unofficial.) Washington, Jan. 12, 1832. 

Mr Dear Sir : — 

I pray you to receive my congratulations on your appointment and the 
unanimity with which your nomination is understood to have been confirmed 
by the Senate — a favor which it is believed will not be conferred upon all of 
us. Allow me also to ask at what time you can arrange your affiiirs for a 
departure. Have you designated any one to serve as your Secretary of Le- 
gation ? You know that your wishes will be consulted on the occasion. 
Should you not desire that Mr. Clay should be retained in that situation, I 



l^Q LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

could mention a gentleman who would be highly useful to you. He speaks 
most of the modern languages, has travelled in Europe and made good use of 
his travels ; he is now employed in my Department and I should part with 
him with very great regret, but being sincerely attached to him I consider 
his advancement, not my interest or convenience, in this application; for he, 
Dr. Greenhow, enjoys my fullest confidence and you will, if you take him, 
find him every way worthy of yours, and well calculated by his manners, de- 
portment and knowledge of the world to aid you in the lighter but very 
necessary duties of your station, as well as to perform those of a more im- 
portant kind Avith which you may entrust him. 

Two or three apples of discord have, as you will perceive by the papers, 
been thrown in both houses — each of them sufficient to create a warfare that 
will last during a session. 

I am, my dear Sir, with high regard, 

Your most obedient servant, 

Edw. Livingston, 

"Witli what feelings Mr. Buclianan left his home in Lancas- 
ter and proceeded to Washington, and thence to New York to 
take passage for Liverpool, may be gathered from the following 
portions of his diary : 

March 21, 1832. 
I left Lancaster in the stage early in the morning for Washington and 
arrived in Baltimore the same evening. Although my feelings are not very 
easily excited, yet my impressions on this day were solemn and sad. I was 
leaving a city where I had spent the best years of my life, where I had been 
uniformly a popular favorite, and, above all, where I had many good and true 
friends who had never abandoned me, under the most trying circumstances. 
Among these people I had acquired a competence for a man of moderate 
wishes, and I think I may say without vanity my professional aud personal 
character stood very high. I was about to embark in a new pursuit, and one 
in which my heart never Avas ; to leave the most free and happy country 
on earth for a despotism more severe than any [other] which exists in Eu- 
rope. These gloomy reflections often came athwart my mind. They were 
succeeded, however, by a sense of reliance on that good Providence which 
hitherto had blessed and sustained me, and by a conviction that I was about 
to go upon an important mission in which I might be made the instrument in 
His hands of rendering important services to my country. 

Sunday, April 8ih. 
I set sail from New York for Liverpool on board the "Silas Richards," 
Captain Henry Holdridge, accompanied by Lieutenant John W. Barry, 
of the U. S. army, as private secretary, and Edward Landrick, a mulatto 
servant. I sufiered from sea-sickness during nearly the whole voyage. Our 
fellow-passengers were kind and agreeable. Dr. Hosack of New York 



ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND. I37 

gave Charles Archibald, Esq., the son of the Attorney-General of Nova 
Scotia, a letter of introduction to me, which he delivered on ship-board. I 
found him to be an amiable and intelligent young gentleman, and enjoyed 
much pleasure in his society. There was a Mr. "Walter — an Englishman — 
from London, on board, a man of general information, who was always ready 
and always willing to defend all the institutions of his own country, whether 
good or bad. Hu would have been a very agreeable companion, had he been 
willing to converse instead of making speeches. Notwithstanding, he was 
warm-hearted and kind, and the impression he made upon me was quite 
favorable. In addition to these passengers, we had a Mr. Clapham from 
Leeds, Mr, Stuart from Pittsburg, Mr. and Mrs. McGee and Mr. Moller of 
New York, Mr. McBride of Dublin, Mr. Morris of Brockville, U. C, and his 

sister-in-law, Mrs. Morris, from in the same province, Mr. Osmond, 

a preacher of the Society of Friends, from Indiana, going to London to at- 
tend the yearly meeting, Mrs. and Miss Taylor of New York, 

The captain was an excellent seaman, a gentleman in his manners, and 
possessed much more information than could have been expected from one in 
his profession who had crossed the Atlantic eighty-eight times. We saw 
Cape Clear, the southwestern point of Ireland on Sunday, the 22d ; but 
were detained by head winds for several days on that coast. Several of us 
had determined to go on board a fishing boat and land at Cork, and proceed 
from thence to Dublin, but were prevented by adverse winds from approach- 
ing the shore. We arrived in Liverpool on Thursday, the 3d May, about 12 
o'clock (noon), after a passage of 25 days, "When the pilot came on board, 
he informed us that Liverpool was clear of cholera, but that it was raging 
both in Cork and Dublin, We took lodgings at the Adelphi Hotel. The 
passengers on this day gave Captain Holdridge a dinner at " The Star and 
Garter," at which I presided, Mr. Brown and Mr. Ogden, our consul, were 
present as guests, 

Friday J May 4:th. 
Mr, Brown of Liverpool took me about in his carriage and showed me 
the town of Liverpool, The appearance of the people, their manners and 
their language are so similar to those of New York that I could scarcely 
realize I was in England, The brick of which the houses are built when 
new have a dirty yellow appearance and the coal dust soon gives them a 
darker hue. This imparts a gloomy appearance to the town and deprives it 
of that light and cheerful hue which we experience in Philadelphia and New 
York. It is a place of great wealth and vast commerce, although the ap- 
proach to it is tedious and difficult and altogether impracticable at low tide. 
The Mersey is but a small river compared with those in America, Its docks 
are admirable and very extensive, covering a space actually under water of 
between eighty and ninety English acres. The cemetery is well worthy of 
observation, Mr. Barry and myself dined with Mr. Brown at his country 
house about three miles from Liverpool. It is beautifully situated, the grounds 
around it highly improved, and both its external and internal appearance 



138 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

prove the wealth and the taste of its opulent and hospitable owner.* Francis 
B. Ogden, Esq., the American consul, and several other gentlemen were of 
the party. We spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening. 

Mr. Ogden has wandered much over the world. He is an agreeable and 
warm-hearted fellow and something, I should suppose, of what we call " a 
gimcrack" in America. He has given me a cipher of his own invention 
which he says is the best in the world — and that it may be continually 
changed, so that my secretary may decipher one letter and yet know nothing 
about any other. During our stay at Liverpool we received many atten- 
tions. We were particularly indebted to Mr. Crary and Mr. Carnes, for 
whom I had letters of introduction from my friend John S. Crary of New 
York. I could not help observing at this place what a strong impression 
the successful operations of our Government had produced on the minds of 
Englishmen. Our national character now stands high, notwithstanding the 
efforts which have been made to traduce it. 

Saturday^ 5th. 

Left Liverpool on the railroad, and arrived at Manchester — a distance of 
thirty miles — in one hour and twenty-five minutes. There are two tunnels, 
one of about 2200 yards, under the city, to communicate with the vessels at 
the docks, the other about 200 yards, passing under a hill in the suburbs. 

The following letter to his youngest brother, lately the Eec- 
tor of Oxford Church, Philadelphia, gives his first impressions 
of England: 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO HIS BHOTHER EDWARD.] 

London, May 12, 1832. 
My Dear Brother : — 

We left Liverpool on Saturday morning last and arrived in this city on Tues- 
day. On our way, after passing over the railroad to Manchester, we visited 
Birmingham, Kenilvvorth Castle, Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Blen- 
heim and Oxford. Every portion of the country that we have seen is in the 
highest state of cultivation, and its appearance at this season of the year is 
delightful. One thing, however, which must strike every American traveller, 
is the mercenary spirit of all that class of people with whom he comes in 
contact on the road. No person performs any office for you, no matter how 
slight, without expecting to be paid. Indeed travelling and living here are 
very extravagant, and not the slightest part of the trouble and expense are 
the perquisites which it is expected you will give to servants of all kinds, 
post-boys, coachmen, etc. 

I have visited the cathedrals of Oxford and Westminster Abbey— two of 
the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in England. I have not time to 



* Mr. afterwards Sir William Brown, an eminent banker of extensive American con- 
nections. 



LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 139 

give you a description of either. They are gloomy, venerable piles, and 
give birth to many solemn associations. They recall past ages to your view, 
and raise the mighty dead of former generations to be your companions. 
As places of worship, however, they must be very damp and uncomfortable. 
In Ireland the people have ceased to pay tithes. They submit to have their 
articles seized, but the proctors can find no purchasers for such articles at any 
price. The consequence has been that nearly all payments have ceased. 
This country is at present in a very distracted state. Never since the days of 
Charles I. has there been such an excitement among the mass of the people. 
"What will be the event, God only knows. The king [William IV.], who this day 
week was one of the most popular monarchs who ever sat upon any throne, 
is now detested or rather despised by the people. His refusal to create the 
number of peers necessary to carry the Reform Bill, and his alleged hypocrisy 
throughout the whole proceeding, have occasioned this change in public 
sentiment. I should not be astonished at a revolution ; but yet I hope and 
trust that the people may obtain their just rights without resorting to such a 
dreadful alternative. The Church is not popular. Its rich livings are con- 
ferred upon the younger branches of noble houses more with a view of 
making a provision for their temporal wants than of providing for the spiritual 
welfare of the people committed to their charge. The best course is pur- 
sued in our own country, where men choose the ministry from conscientious 
motives, and the people provide for them voluntarily. The present system 
of tithes cannot continue much longer in this country without some modifi- 
cation, unless there should be a much stronger government than exists at 
present. Indeed, from everything I have seen, although this is a country 
of vast wealth and resources, and of very advanced civilization, I thank my 
God that I was born an American rather than an Englishman. 

I expect, God willing, to leave this place for St. Petersburg on Friday 
next, the day of the sailing of the steam packet, and I hope to reach the end 
of my journey on or about the first of June. I am anxious once more to feel 
settled. From all the information I can receive the diplomatic circle of St. 
Petersburg is a very agreeable one, and the Emperor and Court entertain the 
most friendly feelings towards our country. Prince Lieven, the Russian 
ambassador to this country, has been very polite to me. Although I do not 
anticipate much happmess during my continuance abroad, yet I have no 
doubt, with the blessing of Providence, I shall be content. You need not 
expect to hear from me again until I shall reach St. Petersburg. Please to 
send this letter to mother, and drop a few lines to Maria. Write to me often. 
I feel very anxious to hear from George. I trust in Heaven that he may be 
restored to health. You will perceive by the papers that the cholera has 
almost entirely disappeared from this city ; indeed, it never was very formid- 
able here. I was at Covent Garden Theatre on Thursday evening, and saw 
Young's Tragedy of Revenge performed. Mr. Young, the most celebrated 
tragedian of England, performed the part of Zanga. It was a most masterly 
performance, and excited the deepest interest. Although I have always 



140 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

admired that play, I never felt all its force and beauty until that night. Give 
my love to mother, Jane, Harriet, George, Mr. Lane and all the family, and 
believe me ever to be 

Your aflfectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 

12 :30, Monday, May Uth. 
The Duke of "Wellington is Premier ; the members of his Cabinet not yet 
known. 

Mr. Buchanan went from London to Hamburg by a packet, 
and thence made the overland journey to St. Petersburg. I 
find only the following traces of his travel : 

Tuesday, May 22d [1832]. 

The appearance of Hamburg is calculated to make a favorable impression. 
It is situated on the northern bank of the Elbe, the river here running a little 
to the north of vrest. The old part of the town along and near to the river 
has a very antiquated appearance. Most of the houses are built with their 
ends fronting on the street, and they are composed of wooden frame-work, 
the interstices being filled up with brick. In this respect they resemble the 
ancient houses of Lancaster. Many of these houses are three stories, and 
some of them more in height up to the square — the gable end, and above it, 
contains one and two and three stories with windows on the street until it 
comes to a point ornamented with various figures. 

The new part of the city is beautiful. In the northern part of it there is 
a small lake, called the " Binnen Alster," nearly square, and about a quarter 
of a mile on each side. Around this lake, except on the northern side, there 
are ranges of very fine houses built in the modern style, at a considerable 
distance from it, so as to leave room not only for the street, but for spacious 
walks shaded by trees, with benches placed at convenient distances. Still fur- 
ther to the north there is a larger lake communicating with the former called 
the " Grosse Alster." All around this lake and along the small stream which 
feeds it there are shaded walks, public gardens and grass plots laid out with 
much taste, and kept in perfect repair. The graveyard in the midst of them 
shows that man's long home may be made a subject of attraction for the 
living ; and my own feelings taught me that those who are led to the place 
appointed for all living, from curiosity, may leave it under solemn and useful 
impressions. 

I called this morning upon John Cuthbert, Esq., our consul, and left at 
the house of Mr. Gossler, a senator of Hamburg, a letter of introduction, with 
my card, which I had received from his brother at New York. Mr. Cuthbert 
called witli me on Monsieur Bacheracht, the consul-general from Russia, 
who was sick in bed, and I left at his house the letter from Prince Lieven. 
We also called on Mr. Parish, but did not see him. 



JOURNEY TO ST. PETERSBURG. 141 

This is one of the ancient free cities of Germany. It is governed by a 
Senate, consisting of twenty-four members, composed of lawyers and mer- 
chants, each one-half. The Senate fills up its own vacancies as they occur. 
It also elects four of its own members burgesses, in whom the executive au- 
thority is vested. The deliberations of the Senate are in secret. The duties 
on goods imported are but one-half per cent, ad valorem, and the gther taxes 
upon the people are very light. They appear to be contented and happy, 
and I have yet seen but one beggar on the streets. Indeed their language 
and appearance strongly reminded me of Lancaster. The Senate also elects 
four Syndicks, but not of their own body. 

According to their laws no foreigner can be a resident merchant here, un- 
less he goes through the forms and submits to the expense and inconvenience 
of becoming a burgher. Mr. Cuthbert claimed for an American naturalized 
citizen this privilege under our treaty with Hamburg, without becoming a 
burgher, and after some correspondence on the subject it was granted. This 
is a privilege which the English have never yet obtained, I advised Mr. 
Cuthbert to send the correspondence to the Secretary of State. 

The outlet of the lakes into the river furnishes a water-power sufficient to 
turn several mills, and water for a canal which is very useful in connecting 
the river with the upper part of the city. It is strange that not a single dock 
has been erected on the river by this ancient city. 

The constitution of Hamburg, although far from being free in the just 
acceptation of the term, has secured to the citizens enviable advantages, 
compared with many of the other states of Germany. 

We dine with Mr. Gossler to-morrow. 

(Here follows a minute account of the coins m common use in Hamburg.) 

May 23d. 
We dined with Mr. Gossler, the son, in the country ; his father, to whom 
we had the letter, being now in England. Our host had resided in Boston, 
and about three years ago married Miss Bray of that city. She is related to 
the Elliott family, and is a sprightly, pleasant woman, who talks very Avell. 
Besides our host and hostess, the company consisted of Mr. William Gossler, 
their uncle, an old bachelor ; Mr. Charles H. Carnegy, a young Scotchman 
who came in the packet with us from London ; Mr. Wainwright, from Bos- 
ton, also our fellow-passenger; Mr. Barry, and myself We spent a very 
agreeable afternoon and evening. We received an invitation from Mr. 
Richard Parish to dine with him on Sunday at his country place, which we 
were obliged to decUne, intending to leave for Lubeck on Saturday. 

Tliursday, May 24<A. 

In the morning, we visited Altona, a Danish town in Holstein adjoining 
Hamburg, and below it on the river. Its appearance is similar to that of the 
old part of Hamburg, though it contains some fine modern houses. The 



142 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

public walks are also pleasant here. The population is said to be 25,000. 
In the afternoon, we ascended the steeple of St. Michael's, and had a fine view 
of the city. It is 480 feet in height. The church is a fine building. I 
observed in it an altar, at some distance from the pulpit, with an image above 
it of our Saviour on the cross. This in a Lutheran Church was new to me. 

Before I enter upon the business of the mission, some of the 
private letters which Mr. Buchanan wrote to his friends at 
home, during the summer of 1832, will be found to contain 
matters of interest. Whatever other accomplishments he pos- 
sessed or wanted, he certainly wrote very agreeable letters. 
One of the first persons to whom he wrote, after his arrival at 
St. Petersburg, was General Jackson. 

[mR. BUCnANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.J 

St. Petersburg, June 22, 1832. 
Dear General : — 

You will, ere this reaches you, have heard of my arrival in this capital, 
through the Department of State. Certainly it is not the place I should select 
for my residence, though it may be justly termed a city of palaces. The cli- 
mate is healthy, but very cold. Indeed it can scarcely be said that summer 
has yet commenced. Their winter continues about seven months. At this 
season there is literally no night. I feel confident I could read common print 
at 12 p. M. I use no candles. The Americans and English here say they 
suffer more from the heat than from the cold during winter. All the houses 
have double casements, double windows, and very thick walls, and they are 
heated by stoves to a high degree of temperature. The Russians still wear 
their cloaks in the streets. The great objection which an American must 
feel to a residence in this country does not arise from the climate, though 
that is bad enough ; it is because here there is no freedom of the Press, no 
public opinion, and but little political conversation, and that very much 
guarded. In short, we live in the calm of despotism. And what makes this 
situation much more unpleasant to me is, that from some cause or other, I 
know not yet what, this mission seldom receives any letters or newspapers 
from the United States. I beg that you would take up this subject yourself, 
and then it will be attended to. But this by the way. 

It must be admitted, however, if we can believe the concurrent opinion of 
all the foreigners resident here with whom I have conversed, that the Em- 
peror Nicholas is one of the best of despots. As a man of excellent private 
character, as a husband, a flither, a brother, and a friend, his life presents a 
fit example for all his subjects. But still he is a despot. But little occurred on 
my presentation to his Majesty worthy of repetition, except what is contained 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 143 

in the despatch. He told me he had one American in his service as his aide — 
that was Mr. Munroe ; that he was not then in St. Petersburg, having gone 
on board one of the ships in the fleet for the purpose of making a campaign 
(for exercise and instruction, I presume), and that he intended to be trans- 
ferred from the military to the naval service. 

The empress talked very freely. She spoke on several subjects, and with 
great rapidity. Amongst other things she observed we were wise in Amer- 
ica not to involve ourselves in the foolish troubles of Europe ; but she added 
that we had troubles enough among ourselves at home, and alluded to our 
difficulties with some of the Southern States. I endeavored in a few words 
to explain this subject to her ; but she still persisted in expressing the same 
opinion, and, of course, I would not argue the point. The truth is, that the 
people of Europe, and more especially those of this country, cannot be made 
to understand the operations of our Government. Upon hearing of any 
severe conflicts of opinion in the United States, they believe what they wish, 
that a revolution may be the consequence. God forbid that the Union should 
be in any danger! If unfortunate events should occur tending to destroy 
the influence of our example, constitutional liberty throughout the rest of the 
world would receive a blow from which it might never recover. In making 
these remarks, I do not mean to state that the Russian government are un- 
friendly to the people of the United States ; on the contrary, I believe they 
prefer us decidedly either to the English or French; but yet they must 
attribute to our example the existence of those liberal principles in Europe 
which give them so much trouble. Upon the whole, my interview with the 
empress was quite agreeable. 

There are three ambassadors at this court: Lord Heytesbury, the English; 
the Marshal Duke of Treviso (Mortier), the French; and Count Figlemont, 
the Austrian ; and a number of ministers plenipotentiary of my own grade. 
In point of rank I am at the tail of the list, and I should be very sorry to 
suppose I would ever reach the head. The rule upon this subject, however, 
is wholly unexceptionable : the minister who has been longest here ranks the 
highest in his own grade. The Diplomatic Corps have received me very 
kindly. This I may attribute to the high character my country is everywhere 
acquiring. Your foreign policy has had no small influence on public opinion 
throughout Europe. It is supposed Marshal Mortier is not very agreeable to 
this government : he is the oSicer who blew up the Kremlin, 

I have taken a comfortable and well-furnished house in a beautiful situa- 
tion fronting on the Neva, to which I expect to remove next week. My 
family will consist of Mr. J. Randolph Clay [Secretary of the Legation], whom 
I have invited to live with me, Lieutenant Barry [private secretary], and 
myself. My expenses will be great, but I shall endeavor to keep them within 
my outfit and salary. 

From an examination of the correspondence between Mr. Clay and the 
Department I fear I shall have difficulties in the settlement of my accounts. 
It was not possible for him with the most rigid economy to exist as charge 



144 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

d'aflfaires upon his salary, had he received all to which he was entitled, and 
yet he has received but about $1880 per annum. So far as I can understand 
the subject, the difficulty has arisen solely from the circumstance that we are 
authorized to draw on Amsterdam, and not on London. Surely this circum- 
stance cannot change the amount of salary to which a minister is entitled by 
law, nor ought Mr. Clay to receive less at a more expensive court than Mr. 
Vail receives in England. Mr. Livingston told me it would make no difference 
to me whether I drew on Amsterdam or London, and this may eventually be 
the case ; but I am very anxious to avoid the difficulty of having a troublesome 
account to settle with the Department. I should esteem it, therefore, a par- 
ticular favor, if it be just, that you Avould authorize me to draw on London. 
Every difficulty on this subject would be removed, if we were allowed five 
rubles here for a dollar, which is the manner in which our consul settles his 
accounts; and I should suppose, from a communication received by Mr. Clay 
from my friend Mr. Pleasonton, that he now believes this to be correct. Par- 
don me for thus troubling you with my own affiiirs 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO HIS BROTHER EDWARD.] 

St. Petersburg, July 15-27, 1833. 
My Dear Brother: — 

I received yours of the 4th of June on the 19th inst. It contains melan- 
choly information. I trust each one of us may be able to say in relation to 
ourselves " God's will be done I " I fear there is but little hope for poor 
George. May his latter end be peace I God grant that he may recover ! 

's marriage must have been a gloomy ceremony. I hope, however, 

that joy may succeed to gloom, and that her marriage may be happy. I fear 
that her husband's health is not good. I would thank you to make it a 
point to wish them happiness in my name. May they be united in spirit here 
and be heirs of glory hereafter I 

From some unaccountable neglect either at the Department of State or 
the Legation in London, I have received no newspapers from the United 
States since my arrival in this city except those which came in the vessels 
with your two letters of the 3d of May and 4th of June ; and these letters 
are all I have received from our country except one from Mr. Reynolds of 
Lancaster. I have thus been entirely deprived of the pleasure of hearing 
anything from my relations but what you have communicated. I shall en- 
deavor to correct this evil ; but in the meantime it would be better to send 
letters intended for me to Mr. Crary or some other friend in New York who 
would enclose them to our charge in London (Mr. Vail). I presume no ship 
will leave America for St. Petersburg after you shall have received this letter 
until early in the next spring. I hope my friends in New York will not 
neglect to send me newspapers by every such opportunity. 

I cannot complain of my situation here, though it is not very agreeable. 
The press is under so strict a censorship that nothing is published except 
what the government pleases. Every avenue through which liberal opinions 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. I45 

might enter this empire is carefully closed ; and in fact but few even of the 
higher classes of society know much of our country or its institutions. An 
American minister, therefore, to this court enjoys but few of the advantages 
he would derive from the character of his country either in England or 
France. Notwithstanding, I have been treated very civilly, particularly by 
the Diplomatic Corps and the English, who are numerous here. We have an 
Episcopal church, of which a Mr. Law is the rector. He is said to be a good 
man, and is a tolerably good preacher ; I have heard him twice. The ser- 
vice of the English Church is very long; I think the retrenchments made in 
it by the Church in the United States have been very judicious. There is 
also a Methodist church here, which I have not visited. 

The higher classes among the Eussians in St. Petersburg have, I fear, but 
little religion ; and the common people are very ignorant and superstitious. 
Although the Greek differs from the Latin Church in regard to the use of 
images, yet they cross themselves here, with much apparent devotion, before 
consecrated 'pictures, which are put up everywhere throughout the city ; and 
in passing the churches. Among this class there is no honesty; they will 
always cheat you if they can. To this rule I have not met with a single ex- 
ception. Although I am far from believing that a Puritanical observance of 
Sunday is required of us, yet I confess I have been shocked with its profana- 
tion in this country. The emperor and empress, who are models of correct 
moral deportment in other respects, give their balls and grand fetes on Sun- 
day evening; and I am confident it has never entered their thoughts that in 
this respect they were acting incorrectly. 

My domestic arrangements are very comfortable. My house is excellent 
and very well furnished. It has the benefit of a fine view of the Neva, and 
a southern exposure, which in this land of frost and snow is a great advan- 
tage. We have not yet had one day which could be called summer. The 
weather has been cool, and indeed the season has been more remarkable than 
any which the oldest inhabitants have ever experienced. In common seasons 
they have about six weeks of very warm weather. It is healthy and my 
health is good. 

Mr. Clay and Mr. Barry are very agreeable young gentlemen. The latter 
desires to be remembered to you. The mulatto man I brought with me from 
the United States is a valuable servant. I know not what I should do with- 
out him. 

Give my kindest love to George. I have written to him since my arrival 
here. Give my love to mother, Jane, Maria, Harriet and all the family. I 
have not yet written to Maria ; I shall do so soon. Should you be in New 
York on the receipt of this, remember me to my friends there. Praying to 
God that we may meet again in health and prosperity in our native land, I 
remain 

Your aflfectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 

L— 10 



14G LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO JOHN B. STERIGERE.] 

St. Petersburg, August 2, N. S. 1832. 
My Dear Sir : — 

Here I am, pleasantly situated in my own house, which commands a de- 
lightful view of the Neva and all the vessels which enter this port. The city 
is magnificent and beautiful. The buildings, both public and private, have 
been constructed upon a grand scale ; but the people are ignorant and bar- 
barous. With the exception of the merchants and a few others in the com- 
mercial cities, there is no intermediate rank between the nobleman and the 
slave. The serfs, however, are not unkindly treated. They are attached to 
the soil, and in general are not bound to labor for their masters more than 
three days in the week. Besides they are furnished with land which they 
cultivate for themselves. No one can be here for a month without being 
fully convinced that these people are wholly unfit to take any share in the 
government, and it is doubtless the poUcy of the emperor and nobles to keep 
them in this state of ignorance. Throughout Germany the people have gen- 
erally received the rudiments of education and are fit for free institutions ; 
but here despotism must yet prevail for along time. Plow happy ought we to 
be in America I "Would that we knew our own happiness ! Coming abroad 
can teach an American no other lesson but to love his country, its institutions 
and its laws better, much better than he did before. 

The emperor and the empress in their domestic relations are worthy of 
all praise. In this respect their example is excellent, and I am inclined to be- 
heve it has had a favorable effect upon the conduct of their nobles. Still that 
is far from being of the best character. 

From my own observation and experience since I left home, I do not 
think a wise American ought to desire a foreign mission. For my OAvn part 
I should greatly prefer a seat in the Senate to any mission which the Govern- 
ment could confer upon me. I trust, however, that I shall be instrumental 
during my sojourn here in benefiting my country. If my labors in accom- 
plishing the objects of my mission were closed I should be very desirous of 
returning home ; but I shall remain as long as duty requires, and endeavor 
to be content. 

There has been great neglect in the Department of State or somewhere 
else in forwarding my letters and newspapers. I have not yet received a 
single newspaper, except a few which were sent me by some friends direct 
from New York, and the two or three letters that have reached me refer me 
to the papers for political news. This being the case, I charge you by our 
mutual friendship to write to me often and give me all the news. Please to 
send your letters to Campbell P. White or some other friend in New York, 
not to the Department of State; and direct them to the care of Aaron Vail, 
Esquire, our charge in London. Perhaps it might be better to enclose them 
to him. He is a very good fellow and Avill be attentive in forwarding them. 
I was much pleased with him in London. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 147 

It seems Van Buren has been nominated by the Baltimore Convention;* 
but Pennsylvania has not yet yielded her pretensions in favor of Mr. Wilkins. 
I fervently hope that such a course will be pursued by our State as not to 
endanger its vote in favor of General Jackson. 

I have been well treated since my arrival by the Diplomatic Corps gen- 
erally ; but particularly so by Lord Heytesbury the English, and the Duke of 
Treviso the French ambassador, and by the Swedish and Hanoverian minis- 
ters. So far as regards my personal feelings I am very sorry that Lord H. 
has been replaced by Lord Durham. The latter does not promise to be so 
popular as the former. I have not yet learned to submit patiently to the 
drudgery of etiquette. It is the most formal court in Europe and one must 
conform to its rules. Foreign ministers must drive a carriage and four with a 
postilion, and have a servant behind decked out in a more queer dress than 
our militia generals. This servant is called a "chasseur" and has in his 
chapeau a plume of feathers. To this plume, as it passes, the detachment of 
soldiers present arms, and individual soldiers take off their hats. Hovv' absurd 
all this appears to a republican ! It Avas with some degree of apprehension 
that I took a house on the north side of the river, although by far the best I 
could find ; because no foreign minister had resided on this side before; but 
it has succeeded, and since I have set the example I have no doubt it will be 
followed by others, as it has many advantages over the opposite shore. 

Let me hear how you are succeeding at the law. Be not discouraged. 
Persevere and with the blessing of Heaven your success is certain. Remem- 
ber me kindly to Mr. Paulding, Mr. Patterson, and all my other friends 
whom you may chance to meet. If you all think as often of me as I do of 
you, I shall be freshly remembered. 

Ever your sincere friend, 

James Bcchanan". 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO HIS BROTHER EDWARD.] 

St. Petersburg, September 1-13, 1832. 
Dear Brother : — 

I received your very agreeable letter of the 15th July on the 4th Septem- 
ber. I was very anxious indeed to hear from poor George, and regret to 
learn that which I have for some time apprehended, that we can indulge 
but little hope of his final recovery. Still it is a great satisfaction to know 
that he does not feel alarmed at the prospect of death. I trust his philoso- 
phy may be of the genuine Christian character and that he may have dis- 
armed death of its sting by saving faith in the Redeemer of mankind. Still 
hope will linger and is unwilling to abandon us when so near and dear a re- 
lative is the object. 

I congratulate you upon your admission to the ministry and trust that you 
may be an instrument in doing much good to your fellow-men 

* As Vice-President. 



148 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The last advices from America have brought us most distressing news 
concerning the progress of the cholera. We have heard that it was subsiding 
in New York, but that it was making great ravages in Philadelphia. God 
grant that it may not have extended into the interior of Pennsylvania. I 
am now very anxious for news from America and expect it by the next 
steamboat in a few days. There have been a few cases of cholera in St. 
Petersburg during the present season. As the newspapers here publish 
nothing upon the subject and there are no reports from the pohce made pub- 
lic there has been scarcely any alarm. Indeed I suppose that a large majority 
of the people know nothing of its existence. Dr. Le Fevre, the j^hysician of 
the British Embassy, told me to-day that in the course of his practice, which 
is very extensive, he had met no case for the last two weeks. Those places 
in Europe which have suffered from the disease one year, generally have ex- 
perienced a slight return of it the next. 

I think this climate will be favorable to my health, at least in regard to 
the bilious complaints with which of late years I have been so much afflicted. 
My life glides on smoothly here. The place is becoming more agreeable to 
me as my acquaintance extends ; yet I still feel like a stranger in a strange 
land. I have so far mastered the French language as to be able to read and 
understand it without much difficulty. It will be some time, however, before 
I shall speak it fluently. 

The Diplomatic Corps yesterday attended a Te Deum at the Church of 
St. Alexander Nevsky. It was the day of that saint, who is the greatest in 
the Russian calendar. The service was very magnificent and imposing; 
though the tones of an organ would have made it grander. These are not 
used in the Greek churches. The emperor was there and appeared to be 
very devout. He often crossed himself, and m one part of the ceremony 
kissed the hand of the archbishop. Think of the proudest and most power- 
ful potentate on earth still continuing to do so much reverence to the clergy! 
Among other miracles, this saint, it is said, rode up the Neva on a grindstone. 
After the service had concluded in the church, we were present at the erec- 
tion of a granite column to the memory of the late Emperor Alexander — the 
largest and heaviest which has ever been erected, it is said, in ancient or 
modern times. There were 2000 men and an immense quantity of machinery 
employed. 

I say again, rely upon the divine blessing and your own judgment in all 
things, and I shall be content ; but let it be taken coolly and not under the 
influence of the idle talk of others. Settle in no place merely for the sake 
of a settlement. You shall not be at any loss for money. Give my love to 
mother and all the family, and believe me to be 

Ever your affectionate brother, 

James Buchanan, 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 149 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

St. Petersburg, October 1-13, 1832. 
Dear General: — 

I avail myself of the present opportunity of writing to you with the more 
eagerness, as I know not when I shall again enjoy that pleasure. The last' 
steamboat for the season will leave here in about a fortnight, and after that 
period no safe opportunity may soon offer. To put my letters in the post- 
office here would be most certainly to expose them to the Russian govern- 
ment ; indeed they scarcely think it uecessaiy to do up the seals decently of 
those which I receive. 

Both the emperor and Count Nesselrode have returned to the capital. 
I may therefore expect a final answer to our propositions in a few days. I 
dined with the count yesterday, who treated me with marked attention. I 
suppose he thought it incumbent on him to do so, as it was the first time he 
had invited me. The dinner was given to the French ambassador, the Duke 
of Treviso, who leaves here to-day in the steamboat on leave of absence. 
"Whether he will ever return is, I think, doubtful. I do not express this opinion, 
because I believe there is danger of immediate hostilities between the two 
countries ; on the contrary, I am satisfied they Avill remain at peace whilst 
Louis Philippe shall continue on the throne and pursue his present course of 
policy. How long the present state of things may last in France is the ques- 
tion. I think you may rest satisfied that Russia will not go to war for the 
King of Holland. She will suffer Prance and England to carry into effect the 
decrees of the London conference against him. This, however, will cause 
much irritation here and in Prussia. Indeed, from my intercourse with the 
Russian nobility, I believe a war with France to preserve Belgium for the 
King of Holland would be highly popular. The emperor, however, has, I 
am almost confident, determined it shall not be for the present. This is wise, 
for I am persuaded that Russia has not yet sufficiently recovered from the 
four wars which she has sustained since the accession of the present emperor, 
to enable her to be as formidable and efficient as the world believes her. As 
long, therefore, as things remain as they are in France, there will not be war. 
An attempt on her part to interfere forcibly with either Germany or Poland 
would instantly change the aspect of affairs. 

News of the death of King Ferdinand of Spain arrived here a few days 
ago, but has since been contradicted. In the mean time it produced a great 
sensation. It is considered that his death without a son must necessarily 
produce a civil war in that ill-fated country, and perhaps make the rest of 
Europe parties. His imprudent abolition of the Salique Law in favor of his 
daughter, it is thought, will not be submitted to by Don Carlos, in favor of 
whose succession the whole of the Apostolical party will be found ranged. 
The government here ardently desires the defeat of Don Pedro. Indeed any 
change in Europe in favor of liberal principles would be disagreeable to them, 



150 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

and they even occasionally publish ill-natured articles concerning the United 
States. This you will perceive from the last St. Petersburg Journal, a file of 
which I shall send by Mr. Mitchell, for whom I have obtained a courier's 
passport. The articles contained in newspapers here have the more meaning, 
as the press is under a most rigid censorship, I am well acquainted, how- 
ever, with the chief censor, Count Laval, who is one of those noblemen who 
have been the most polite to me, and I shall take some opportunity of con- 
versing with him on this subject. 

England is, I think, fast losing her consideration on the Continent. The 
present ministry are not believed to possess much ability, at least for con- 
ducting foreign affairs ; and they have so many embarrassing domestic ques- 
tions on their hands independently of the national debt, that they cannot 
without the most urgent necessity involve the country in a war. They have 
negotiated and paid for making Belgium a virtual province of France — 
Greece of Eussia ; and, I think, they are in a fair way of losing their com- 
mercial advantages in Portugal by an affected neutrality between the hopeful 
brothers of the house of Braganza, for which they receive no credit, at least 
in this country. Although Lord Durham was treated with the most dis- 
tinguished attention by the emperor, he received almost none from the 
nobihty; and they indulge in a bitterness of remark both against him and 
his country which shows what are their feelings towards England. Besides, 
he was au eccentric nobleman, and is the subject of as many ridiculous 
stories as my predecessor. I am sincerely glad that he has in some degree 
taken the place of the latter in the gossip of this city. But this is a sulject 
to which I would not advert in writing to any other person. They have 
no free press here; but they make up for the want of it in private scandal 
in relation to all subjects on which they can talk with safety. The present 
British minister, Mr. BHgh, is a plain, agreeable, and unassuming gentleman, 
with whom my relations are of the most friendly character. 

Witliin the last six weeks I have had the good fortune to make the 
acquaintance of several noble families of the very highest rank, and I am 
beginning to receive many attentions from that class. Their coldness and jeal- 
ousy towards strangers generally are fast disappearing in relation to myself. 
Some accidental circumstances which it would be useless to detail have con- 
tributed njuch to this result. I consider this a fortunate circumstance, as the 
nobility exercise great influence in this country. I think in my despatch of 
the 9th of August last I spoke rather too harshly of them as a class ; and 
although, with a few exceptions, I by no means admire them, yet this shows 
how dangerous it is to form opinions too hastily. The influence of the exam- 
ple of the present emperor and empress, in the correctness of their private 
deportment, is doing their nobility much good. 

Too much care cannot be taken in selecting a minister for this court. In- 
deed it would be diflficult to find many suitable persons in our country for 
this mission. In London and in Paris, our ministers enjoy the consideration 
to which they are entitled from the exalted character of their country ; but 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 151 

here the character of the country must depend in a considerable degree upon 
that of the minister. The principles of the American Grovernment, the con- 
nection between our greatness and prosperity as a nation, and the freedom 
of our institutions, are a sealed book in regard to the Russians. Their own 
press dare publish nothing upon the subject, and all foreign papers, unless 
those of the most illiberal character, are prohibited. The higher classes here 
must in a great degree receive their information concerning our country from 
our minister. This sufficiently points out what ought to be his qualifications, 
and I regret my own deficiency in some important particulars. Great talents 
are by no means so requisite as an easy address, insinuating manners, and a 
perfect knowledge of the French language. (In the latter I have already 
made considerable advances.) Above all he ought to have a genuine Amer- 
ican heart, in which I know I am not deficient, always anxious to seize every 
favorable opportunity, and many such occur, of making an impression in favor 
of his country. There is one great disadvantage, however, under which a 
minister here labors ; and that is, the total inadequacy of the salary. These 
people are fond of extravagance and show, and have not the least taste for 
Republican simplicity and economy. In order that a minister may hold a 
high place in their esteem, he must be able to return their civihties. They 
judge much by appearances. The want of this reciprocity will be attributed 
to the meanness of the minister or that of his country, or both. Even the 
representative of his Sardinian Majesty receives $1G,000 per annum. Now 
if I had $100,000 per annum, I would not pursue any course of conduct in 
this respect which I should be ashamed to exhibit to my countrymen ; but 
surely if they were aware that their minister could not return with Republi- 
can simplicity and dignity the civilities which he cannot avoid receiving 
without giving offence, they would consent to an increase of salary. I think 
$15,000 would be sufficient for the purpose witlwut the outfit. Perhaps it 
would be better to fix it at $13,000, with the expense of a furnished house. 
At all events, I must give some large dinners. 

I make these remarks without feeling the slightest personal interest in 
them, because nothing short of your express commands would induce me to 
remain here longer than two years from the time of my arrival ; and I trust 
something may occur to justify my return to my native land within a shorter 
period. I feel, however, if I had such a salary I could leave a much more 
favorable impression of my country behind me. By the bye, I do not know 
yet what I am to receive ; if I should have to lose the exchange between 
this and Amsterdam at its present rate, my salary will but little exceed $8,000. 
If ever a change shall be made the salary of the minister here ought to be 
fixed in silver roubles. 

I have lately seen much of Mr. Politica, who is still attached to the 
Foreign Office. His feelings towards our country appear to be very friendly. 
From his conversation, I have reason to anticipate a favorable issue to our 
negotiations ; but I shall not allow myself to confide much in unofficial con- 
versations. I have no doubt that they feel it would be their interest to 



-|^52 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

negotiate with us ; and they appreciate highly the advantages of our trade ; 
yet they entertain such strong prejudices against commercial treaties, and 
there are so many wheels within wheels in the complex system of their pol- 
icy that it is safest not to expect a treaty with too much confidence. I have 
no doubt, should they conclude one with us, England Avould insist upon being 
placed on the same footing. Besides,Count Cancrene, the Minister of Finance, 
is understood to be opposed to all commercial treaties. 

I ought to state that I believe the omission to invite Mr. Barry to the re- 
views was unintentional, and Count Nesselrode expressed his sorrow to 
Baron Krudener for the neglect before the latter left this city. 

I shall soon be looking with great anxiety for news concerning our elec- 
tions. I read your veto message with very great pleasure. Although rather 
inclined to be friendly to the re-charter of the Bank of the United States, yet 
I am now free to say, I should vote for no bill for that purpose liable to the 
objections of that which passed both Houses of Congress. I am glad to ob- 
serve the spirit which seems to animate the Republican party of Pennsylvania, 
in relation to this subject. I entertain no apprehension concerning the result 
of your election ; but I wish to see you come into office for a second period 
with that triumphant majority Avhich you are entitled to receive, both from 
the wisdom and success of your foreign and domestic policy. I cannot think 
that the unnatural union between the Clay men and the Anti-masons will re- 
duce your majority ; as I believe the mass of both these parties is honest and 
cannot approve such a political partnership. 

Pardon me for not taking the trouble of correcting and re-writing this 
long and rambling letter. I should do so did I not know it was only in- 
tended for friendly eyes. I now receive my newspapers with tolerable regu- 
larity, through the kindness of my friends in Hamburg and Lubeck. This 
regulation will cease at the close of the present month, when the steamboats 
will be discontinued. Please to present my best respects to the members of 
your Cabinet. I have been for some time expecting a letter from Major 
Barry. Ptemember me kindly to your family, and believe me to be, wherever 
my lot may be cast, 

Your faithful, devoted and grateful friend, 

James Buchanan. 



[mR. BUCHANAN TO HIS BROTHER EDWARD.] 

St. Petersburg, October 13lh, 1832. 
My Dear Brother: — 

I received yours of the 12th August dated Union, Ya., on the 2d instant. 
It gave me a gloomy picture of the state of poor George's health and has 
deprived me of the last ray of hope in relation to his recovery. Indeed whilst 
I am writing this I have too much cause to apprehend that your next will 
announce that he has bidden an eternal adieu to this vain and transitory 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 153 

world. I bad conceived the highest hopes of his future eminence and use- 
fulness. His talents were of the first order, his manners were popular and 
his principles were, I believe, perfectly pure. Alas 1 that his sun, which rose 
so brightly and promised such a brilliant day, should so soon be extinguished. 
Such seems to have been the inscrutable decree of an all-wise Providence. 
May our dear mother and may we all be enabled to say, " Father, Thy will 
be done.'' I feel the deepest gratitude towards Dr. Semmes for his kindness. 
My acquaintance with him was but slight, but I shall make it a point, should 
I ever have an opportunity, of manifesting to him how much I have been 
penetrated by his kindness. In the meantime do not fail to make my 
sentiments known to him. It is probable that ere long I shall address him a 
letter returning him my thanks. You can readily conceive what anxiety I 
shall feel until the arrival of your nest. I trust it may have pleased Provi- 
dence to enable poor George to reach Mercersburg. 

My time here is gliding on not unpleasantly. When I reflect upon my 
past life and the many merciful dispensations of which I have been the sub- 
ject, I cannot be too thankful to the Almighty. This land of despotism is 
not the place where an American minister ought to have expected many 
friends, particularly as the Russian nobility have but little disposition to 
cultivate the acquaintance of strangers ; it has yet so happened that several 
of the very highest order have shown me much kindness, and I have some 
reason to believe I shall be a favorite. The English merchants, who are 
numerous, wealthy and respectable, have been very civil, and the Diplomatic 
Corps have paid me all the attention I could desire. Still I shall be happy 
when the day arrives that I can with honor leave this elevated station and 
return to my native land. 

The ladies here, as they are almost everywhere, are the best part of soci- 
ety. Many of them and their children speak English very well, Avhose 
husbands cannot speak a word of that language. There is a Princess Tscher- 
batoflf here with whom I have become very intimate. She has a charming 
family and they have travelled much through Europe. She is a lady of un- 
common intellect, brilliant accomplishments, and yet preserves great personal 
attractions. I mention her name for the purpose of introducing a circum- 
stance somewhat singulai-. By some means or other she got hold of the 
"Pilgrim's Progress," and it has evidently produced a considerable effect 
upon her feelings. She has read several of the old English devotional books 
and likes to converse upon the subject of religion. It is strange that my first 
and most intimate acquaintance with a Russian Princess should have been 
with one conversant with the writings of such men as John Bunyan and 
Isaac Watts. I doubt whether there is another like her in this respect 
throughout the Empire. She is a member of the Greek Church and attached 
to it ; but informs me that she often goes to hear a Mr. Neal preach, who is, 
I believe, a kind of English Methodist. Her religion, and I sincerely believe 
she possesses it, does not prevent her from being very gay and entering into 
the fashionable amusements of her class. There is no estimatins: the srood 



154 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

which an able and pious man may be instrumental in performing, not only in 
his own generation, but long after he has been gathered to his fathers. 

The weather is now about as cold here as it is in Pennsylvania towards the 
close of November. We have already had a slight fall of snow and several 
severe frosts. In going out to dinner in the country on the last day of Sep- 
tember, I observed a very large oats field in shock. Very httle of it had 
been taken in. You may judge of the nature of the climate from this circum- 
stance, though this season has been remarkably cold and damp. I can now 
readily believe, what I have often heard since my arrival, that I should suffer 
less from cold in this country than in my own. They regulate the heat of the 
houses by a thermometer ; and their stoves are so admirably contrived that 
they are large and beautiful ornaments, and consume but very little wood 
compared with those of our own country. My health still continues to be 
good, thank God ! 

Give my kindest love to my mother — how often do I now think of her 
with gratitude and affection! to Jane, Maria, and Harriet, and to poor 
George, if he be still living. Remember me to Mr. Lane, afiectionately, and 
to all the family. 

I shall send this letter enclosed to Mr. Lane, with directions that they may 
read it if you should not be in Mercersburg. Remember me to Uncle John, 
Alexander and his lady, Mr. Reynolds and his lady, and to Mrs. Martin and 
Molly Talbot, and believe me to be ever 

Your faithful and affectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MRS. SLAYMAKER.] 

St. Petersburg, October 31, 1832. 
Dear Madajm: — 

I received your kind and agreeable letter of the 20th August last on the 
8th instant. I scarcely know anything the perusal of which could have 
afforded me more pleasure. I left no friend in my native land for whose 
interest and welfare I have a greater solicitude than for your own. How 
could it be otherwise ? Your conduct since the lamented death of your hus- 
band, whose memory I shaU ever cherish, has been a model of propriety. 
The severest critic could not find fault with any part of it, unless it be that 
you have too much secluded yourself from society, of which you are so well 
calculated to be an agreeable and instructive member. I have never hereto- 
fore expressed these sentiments to you because you might have considered 
them the language of flattery. As they now proceed from " a stranger in a 
strange land," I cannot believe you will doubt their sincerity. 

I fear I cannot with truth defend the chastity of the Empress Catharine. 
She was a disciple of the school of the French philosophers, and was there- 
fore wholly destitute of religion — the surest safeguard of female virtue. Her 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 155 

natural dispositioa was, however, good, and where her ambition and her 
pleasures were not concerned she was an amiable and kind-hearted woman. 
The Princess Dalgorouski, one of my most intimate friends in this city (if I 
ought to use the term upon so short an acquaintance), is the granddaughter 
of the youngest brother of the Orloffs. She has several times amused me 
with anecdotes which she had heard from her grandfather, all tending to 
prove the goodness of Catharine's heart. Among other things, it was not at 
all uncommon for her to rise in the morning and hght her own fire, rather 
than disturb the slumbers of any of her attendants. She took great delight 
not only in educating her own grandchildren, but others of the same age about 
the court. Her son Paul, however, was always her aversion. When he suc- 
ceeded to the throne he acted like a madman, and I have often had to laugh at 
the pranks of his tyranny. For example, he issued an edict commanding all 
persons, whether male or female, either in the summer or the winter, upon 
his approach to alight from their carriages and stand in the street uncovered 
before him as he passed. Of course the latter part of the rule applied to foot 
passengers. An English merchant, still living in this city, attempted upon 
one occasion to make his escape as the Emperor approached, but he was 
observed by the keen eye of Paul, and was immediately sent for to the palace. 
His defence was that he was near-sighted ; and the Emperor immediately 
presented him with a pair of spectacles, and commanded him never to be seen 
in public without having them upon his nose. The command was literally 
obeyed, and the merchant has ever since worn the sjiectacles. The anecdote 
is hterally true. 

The Emperor Alexander was a mild and amiable man ; but his example, 
until near the close of his life, was not calculated to restrain the dissoluteness 
of manners which prevailed in the days of Catharine. Circumstances, too 
tedious to mention in the limits of a hasty letter, made him at last esteem his 
wife, the Empress Elizabeth, as she deserved. In the commencement of his 
reign, he was a libertine, but he died a fanatic. It is delightful to hear of the 
familiar intercourse which he held with his subjects. He visited many 
families in this city as a private gentleman whom etiquette prevented from 
appearing at court ; and upon such occasions he was as free and familiar, even 
with the children, as though he had been of an equal rank. He died dis- 
gusted with his high station, and exclaimed to Doctor Wyley, his physician, 
who was remonstrating with him for not using his prescriptions, " I am sick 
of this world, why should I desire to live ? " Such is the end of human 
greatness. 

The present emperor is, I think, the finest looking man, take him al- 
together, I have ever beheld; besides he is a prince of great energy and 
ability. However we may detest his conduct towards the Poles, which has no 
doubt been exaggerated in the English and French papers, his moral conduct, 
as well as that of the empress, in all their domestic relations is without a 
blemish. Their example in this respect has already had a happy influence 
on the nobility of this country. On Saturday last I attended a Te Deum at 



156 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

court, celebrated on the occasion of the birth of a young grand duke ; and 
the gaieties of the season are expected to commence as soon as the empress 
shall recover from her accouchement. She is reniarlcably fond of dancing, in 
which she excels. 

My time begins to pass much more pleasantly, or to speak with greater 
accurac}^, less unpleasantly than it did at first. To be an American minister 
is but a slender passport to the kind attentions of the Russian nobility. They 
know but little of our country, and probably desire to know still less, as they 
are afraid of the contamination of liberty. I have, therefore, had to make 
my own way in their society with but little adventitious aid, and I confess I 
am sometimes astonished at my own success. Among the ladies, who, in 
every portion of the world, are the best part of society, I have many 
agreeable acquaintances. A greater number of them speak the English 
language than of the gentlemen. Besides, since my arrival here, I have 
learned to read and write the French, and noAV begin to speak it in cases of 
necessity. 

Besides the nobility there is an agreeable and respectable society here of 
wealthy English and German merchants, among whom I have spent many 
pleasant hours. Although they are not received at court, many members of 
the Diplomatic Corps eat their good dinners, and treat them as they ought to 
be treated, with kindness and civility. I hope to visit Moscow before my 
return to the United States, and that, too, under favorable circumstances. 

I sincerely rejoiced to hear of the good fortune of our friends of the 
Wheatlands. Lydia is a good little girl and deserves to be happy. I was 
pleased with the anecdotes you gave me in relation to the match, and the joy 
which my good friend Grace displayed upon the occasion. My worst wish 
towards them is that they may derive all the happiness from it which they 
anticipate. They are an excellent family, with whom I could wish you to be 
more intimate. I would be better pleased with them, for their own sakes, if 
they were less extravagant ; " but take them for all and all," I feel the 
warmest interest in their welfare. I regret to learn that Aunt Anne, in a 
state of depressed health and spirits, has felt herself under tlie necessity of 
leaving her comfortable home in Lancaster, to take charge of her son Henry's 
family at the iron works. It is just such conduct, however, as I should have 
expected from that excellent and exemplary woman ; she will always sacrifice 
her own comfort to a sense of duty, or to the call of humanity. I shall never 
forget her kindness towards myself. I beg of you to present her my best 
love (I think I may venture to use the expression). Remember me kindly 
also to Anny, and to Henry, Stephen and Samuel. 

I have always appreciated the friendship of your mother as it deserved, 
and have felt proud of her confidence. I trust that your hopes may be 
realized, and that it may please Providence yet to permit me to enjoy many 
happy hours in her society. She possesses an admirable faculty of saying 
much in few words, and there is a point in her character which gives a 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. I57 

peculiar force to her expressions. I know her to be an excellent mother and 
an excellent friend, and I warmly reciprocate her kind feelings. Say to her 
that I ardently wish her many pleasant days, and that the circumstances 
which have heretofore occurred to vex her peace may not prevent her from 
enjoying an old age of comfort and happiness. Remember me also in kind- 
ness to all your sisters. 

But in what terras shall I speak of Mrs. H. ? None of my friends, except 
yourself, have mentioned her name in their letters, and I need scarcely add 
that I did not even indulge the hope of receiving one from herself. This I 
can say of her, and I now speak from actual knowledge, that her manners 
and her talents would grace the most powerful and splendid court in Europe. 
I fear, however, that such a treasure is not destined to bless my pijgrimao-e. 

I altogether approve your conduct in taking the Judge's daughter into 
your family. He is a most excellent man, and will know how to appreciate 
your kindness. I regret to say I have received no letter from him since I 
left the United States. When you see him, please to present him mv kindest 
remembrance. I heartily rejoice that you did not remove to Columbia or 
Marietta. 

From my last information from the United States I have reason to hope 
that the good city of Lancaster has escaped the cholera. We have had some 
of it here during the summer, but not so much as to produce any serious 
alarm. I believe it has almost, if not altogether, disappeared. Mr. Clay, my 
Secretary of Legation, has been very anxious to visit home during the ap- 
proaching winter, and I have given him leave to go by the last steamboat for 
the season, which will leave this to-morrow, Mr. Barry having agreed to 
officiate in his stead during his absence. He will be the bearer of despatches, 
and intends to visit Lancaster. I hope you will favor me with a Ion"- letter 
by him, and give me all the little news of the town ; for you have often said 
I was a great gossip. I shall keep this letter open until I can ascertain 
whether I shall have time to write to Mr. Reynolds, so that if not I may add 
a postscript intended for him. The truth is that at present I am very much 
occupied. A tyro in diplomacy, I am compelled to encounter the most adroit 
and skilful politicians in the world, with no other weapons except a little 
practical common sense, knowledge and downriglit honesty. Should I fail, 
and I by no means despair of success, I wish to convince my government 
that I have done my duty. It is probable that Mr. Clay will take no private 
letters from me to the United States, except for my mother and yourself. I 
need scarcely add that I have not time to write this over, and give it such a 
polish as an answer to your letter deserves. When you write, which I hope 
will be often, please to say nothing of Russia in your letters but what may 
be favorable, as the post office here is not too secure. This caution, however, 
does not apply to that one with which I hope you will gratify me by Mr. 
Clay. Please to remember me kindly to the whole family at the Wheatlands, 
to Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds and Miss Lydia and Dr. Semple — to my old friend 



258 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Miss Mary Carpenter, and to all others bearing that character whom you 
may meet. 

Wishing you Heaven's best blessing, I remain. 

Ever your faitlaful and devoted friend, 

James Buchanan. 

P. S. Please to remember me to Mr. Amos Slaymaker and Henry and 
his wife. I hope Mr. Dickenson may, ere this reaches you, be restored to his 
flock, and have a son and heir to bless his marriage bed. 

I shall not have time to write to Mr. Reynolds. Please to deliver him 
the enclosed, and tell him that I have no journal later than the 10th August, 
although my other papers have arrived up till the middle of September. 
You may also say to him, but to Jiim alone and caution him not to repeat it, 
that the prospects of success in my mission, after many difficulties, now begin 
to appear bright. I have received no letter from him lately. Mr. Clay will 
not leave this for a fortnight yet, and I shall send this letter by another 
opportunity to London. 

As the reader has ah*eacly learned, Mi\ Buchanan had two 
very promising younger brothers, one of whom died five years 
before he went abroad, and the other was living and in apparently 
good health when he left the country. The elder of these two, 
William Speer Buchanan, died at Chambersburg in his 22d 
year, on the nineteenth of December, 1827, a few months after 
his admission to the bar. He had graduated at Princeton in 
1822, and studied his profession at Chambersburg and at the 
law school in Litchfield, Connecticut. His father died while he 
was still at Princeton : and a letter from his mother to his brother 
James, written in 1821, which lies before me, gives indications 
of his early character.* 

"William Buchanan did not, like his next youngest brother, 
live to show what he might have become. This other, and per- 



* [MRS. BUCnANAK TO HER SON JAMES.] 

July 3d, 1821. 

My Dear James:— A letter from William came to hand on the 11th of June, in 

which ho expressed considerable anxiety to return home, that he might once again see his 
father and receive his last benediction ; but upon receiving the melancholy information of 
his death, his desire of coming home is subsided. I am highly gratified by the reception from 
him of a letter of the 18th, in which is exhibited a resignation to and acquiescence in the will 
of Providence, together with appropriate sentiments on that melancholy occasion, far be- 
yond his years. For this I bless the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Hoping you may 
be ever the care of an indulgent Providence, and all your conduct regulated by His unerring 
wisdom, I subscribe myself your aflfectionate 

MOTHEIl. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 159 

haps more brilliant member of tlie family, George W. Bu- 
chanan, graduated at Dickinson college in Carlisle, in 1S26, at 
the age of eighteen, with the highest honors of his class. Be- 
ing nearly twenty years younger than James, the latter, after 
the death of their father, took a parental interest in promoting 
his prospects, and guiding his professional education. He stud- 
ied law in Chambersburg and Pittsburgh, and being admitted 
to the bar in Pittsburgh in 1828, he began to practise there. In 
the autumn of 1830, as the reader has seen, he was, doubtless 
on his brother's request, appointed by President Jackson United 
States District Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylva- 
nia. Probably no man ever received a similar appointment at 
so early an age ; he was only two and twenty ; but his letters, 
some of which have been quoted, show great maturity of char- 
acter ; and as his application for the appointment must have 
been supported by the influence of other persons as well as by 
that of his brother, it is safe to assume that the office was in- 
trusted to fit hands. He was already acquiring a lucrative pri- 
vate practice, when, in the summer of 1832, his health began 
to fail. He died in November of that year, and the following 
letter of Mr. Buchanan to his brother Edward relates to the sad 
termination of his illness : 

St. Petersburg, Jan. 9th, N. S. 1832. 
My Dear Brother: — 

I have received your three letters of the 10th and 26th September and of the 
12th November: the first on the 21st October, the second not till the 2d 
instant, and the last on the 28th December. You will thus perceive that 
the one announcing the death of poor George had a very long passage, 
having got out of the usual line and lain at Paris a considerable time. I 
had heard of this melancholy event long before its arrival. How consoling 
it is to reflect that he had made his peace with Heaven before he departed 
from earth. All men desire to die the death of the righteous; but a large 
portion of the human race are unwilling to lead their life. I can say sincerely 
for myself that I desire to be a Christian, and I think I could withdraw from 
the vanities and follies of the world without suffering many pangs. I have 
thought much upon the subject since my arrival in this strange land, and 
sometimes almost persuade myself that I am a Christian ; but I am often 
haunted by the spirit of scepticism and doubt. My true feeling upon many 
occasions is: "Lord, I would believe; help Thou mine unbelief." Yet I am 
far from being an unbeliever. 



IGO LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Ere this reaches you, you will probably have heard of the conclusion of 
the commercial treaty, which was the principal object of my mission. My 
success under all the circumstances seems to have been almost providential. 
I have had many difficulties to contend with and much serious opposition to 
encounter ; but through the blessing of Providence I have been made the 
instrument of accomplishing a work in which all my predecessors had 
failed. I trust it will receive the approbation and promote the interests of 
my country. 

I entertain some faint hopes that I may be permitted to leave St. Peters- 
burg by the last steamboat of the next season ; though it is probable I 
shall be obliged to remain another winter. Nothing, however, shall detain 
me longer than two years from the time of my arrival, except an urgent 
sense of public duty or the request of G-eneral Jackson, neither of which I 
anticipate. My anxiety to return home is increased by the present state of 
health of mother and Jane. It is not in any degree occasioned by want of 
kindness on the part of the people here. On the contrary, I am everywhere 
received in the most polite and friendly manner, and have good reason to 
believe I am rather a favorite, even with the emperor and empress them- 
selves. 

I shall undertake to advise you strongly not to remain in Allegheny 
Town. A letter which I have received from Dr. Yates confirms me in this 
opinion. I am glad to find this seems to be your own determination. 
There are but two brothers of us and you ought to use every precaution to 
preserve your health consistent with your duty 

My health is good, thank Grod, and I trust it may so continue with His 
blessing until Ave shall all once more meet again. With much love to mother 
and the rest of the family, I remain 

Your affectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1832— 1833. 

NEGOTIATION OF TREATIES — COUNT NESSELRODE — HIS CHARACTERISTIC 
MANAGEMENT OF OPPOSING COLLEAGUES — THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS — 
HIS SUDDEN ANNOUNCEMENT OP HIS CONSENT TO A COMMERCIAL 
TREATY — WHY NO TREATY CONCERNING MARITIME RIGHTS WAS MADE 

RUSSIAN COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESS— BARON 

SACKEN's IMPRUDENT NOTE — BUCHANAN SKILFULLY EXONERATES 
HIS GOVERNMENT — SENSITIVENESS OF THE EMPEROR ON THE SUBJECT 
OF POLAND. 

THE serious business of negotiation began soon after Mr. 
Buchanan's arrival in St. Petersburg. He was charged 
with the duty of proposing a commercial treaty with Russia, 
and also a treaty respecting maritime rights. It would be im- 
possible to attempt to carry my readers through the maze of 
notes, protocols, and despatches which resulted in the successful 
accomplishment of the main object of this mission. A brief 
account of the principal persons concerned in the negotiation, 
and a narrative of its general course, together with a few of its 
most striking incidents, will perhaps be interesting. 

At the head of the Russian chancery at this time was Count 
Nesselrode, the great minister, who, in 1814, as the plenipo- 
tentiary of the Emperor Alexander, signed the treaty between 
the Allied Powers and Xapoleon, which wrested from the latter 
the empire of France and the kingdom of Italy, and confined 
his dominion to the island of Elba. I^esselrode, too, in the same 
capacity, along with Lord Casteh-eagh and Prince Talleyrand, 
concluded the second treaty of Paris between the Allied Powers 
and France, after the final overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, 
the treaty which restored the Bourbons to their throne. This 
distinguished person was the son of a nobleman of German de- 
scent, who had been in the service of the Empress Catharine II., 
and therefore, as well on account of the traditions of his house, 

I.— 11 



162 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

as of his remarkable abilities and erudition, he must have been 
an interesting person to meet. He was, with all his practical 
astuteness, a man of moderate and rational views. He appears 
to have taken kindly to Mr. Buchanan from the first ; but he 
was not predisposed to a commercial treaty with the United 
States, and, indeed, he had not bestowed much attention upon 
the subject. It had not been his habit, or the habit of any of 
the Russian statesmen, during the long wars in which Russia 
had been engaged prior to the year 1815, to look much beyond 
the confines of Europe and those portions of the East which 
were involved in the European system. Still, however. Count 
Nesselrode was open to conviction upon the importance of a 
commercial treaty with the United States ; and it will appear 
in the sequel that the treaty was at length carried in the cabinet, 
against strenuous opposition, by his very dexterous manage- 
ment, seconded by Mr. Buchanan's skilful course and ample 
knowledge of the subject. 

Baron Krudener, who was at this time the Russian Minis- 
ter at "Washington, but who was at home on leave of absence 
when Mr. Buchanan came to St. Petersburg, was opposed to all 
commercial treaties. So was Count Cancrene, the minister of 
finance. He was an embodiment of the old traditionary policy 
of Russia, which did not favor close or special commercial alli- 
ances. From the time of the Empress Catharine, the relations 
between Russia and this country had always been friendly ; 
but there had been no treaties concluded between the two 
countries, since the Government of this Union had taken its 
present form, down to the year 1821. The convention nego- 
tiated in that year by Mr. Middleton, and ratified in 1825, was 
quite inadequate to reach the various interests of trade that 
had since grown up, and was still less adapted to promote an 
increase of the commerce between Russia and the United 
States. To make a treaty which would answer these great pur- 
poses ; establish the principle that would entitle either party 
to require an equal participation in the lavors extended to other 
nations ; provide for the residence and functions of consuls and 
vice-consuls; regulate the rates of duties to be levied on the 
merchandise of each country by the other, so far as to prevent 
undue discrimination in favor of the products of other countries ; 



NEGOTIATION OF TREATIES. 163 

and fix the succession of tlie personal estates of citizens or sub- 
jects of either country dying in the territories of the other ; all 
this constituted a task to be committed on our side to able 
hands, considering the obstacles that had to be removed. Mr. 
Buchanan was at the age of thirty-eight, when he undertook 
this labor. Although he was without official experience in 
diplomacy, I think it evident that he had been a student of the 
diplomatic history of his own country and of public law to a 
considerable extent ; and what he did not know of the trade 
between Russia and the United States before he left home, he 
made liimself master of soon after he arrived at St. Petersburg, 
lie spoke of himself in a letter quoted in the last chapter, as a 
tyro in diplomacy, with no weapons but a little practical com- 
mon sense, knowledge, and downright lionesty, with which to 
encounter the most adroit and skilful politicians in the world. 
It will be seen that he found the encounter a hard one. But 
his manners were conciliatory ; his tact was never at fault, so far 
as I can discover ; and it is evident that he was a favorite in all 
the circles of Russian society into which he entered. He found 
that his weapons, good sense, knowledge of his subject, and a 
certain honest tenacity of purpose, were sufficient for all the 
demands of his position. When he first reached St. Peters- 
burg, his knowledge of the French language was quite imper- 
fect, but he soon acquired sufficient facility in speaking it for 
the ordinary purposes of conversation. Count Nesselrode did 
not speak English well, but he could converse in that language, 
although he did not like to trust himself to it entirely, Mr, 
Buchanan's French was perhaps rather better than the count's 
English. They do not seem in their intercourse to have used 
an interpreter, but in one or the other language they got on 
together very well. 

After Mr. Buchanan's arrival and the necessary formalities 
had been gone through according to the rigid etiquette of the 
Russian court, he wrote privately to General Jackson on the 22d 
of June (1832) in regard to the prospects of his mission, as fol- 
lows: 



1(54 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

St. Petersburg, June 22, 1832. 

I am not without hope of succeeding in the negotiation, though I can say 
notliing upon the subject with the least degree of certainty. I entertain this 
hope chiefly because I am now fully convinced it is their interest to enter 
into a treaty of commerce with us. In a casual conversation the other day 
with Baron Krudener I explained my views of the great advantages Russia 
derived from our commerce with St. Petersburg, and how much, in my opin- 
ion, the agriculture and the general prosperity of the colonies on the Black 
Sea would be promoted by encouraging American navigation in that quarter. 
Yesterday I had another conversation with the baron from which it was evi- 
dent he had been conversing with Count Nesselrode upon the subject ; and 
the impression which I have received from him is rather favorable. Still it 
is of a character so vague that I place but little reliance upon it. I shall see 
Count Nesselrode at one o'clock to-day, and will keep this letter open untU 
after our interview. 

3.30. I have just returned from Count Nesselrode' s, and from our inter- 
view I entertain a hope, I may say a good hope, that I shall be able to con- 
clude both treaties with this government. I am sorry I shall not have time 
to prepare a despatch for Mr. Livingston to be sent by Captain Kamsay. He 
shall hear from me, however, by the first safe opportunity. 

[There is one subject to which I desire briefly to direct your attention. I 
should write to the department about it, but my views are not yet sufficiently 
distinct to place them there upon record, and besides there is not now time. 
In case a treaty should be made with this government on the subject of mar- 
itime rights, its provisions ought to be framed with great care, because it will 
probably be a model for similar treaties with other nations. In looking over 
the project in my possession, I find one provision which it strikes me the 
cabinet ought to re-examine. It is the proviso to the first article. This pro- 
viso was not introduced into our earlier treaties. It first found a place in 
that with Spain and has since been copied into our treaties with Colombia, 
Central America and Brazil. 

Why should this limitation exist ? I shall allude to my views by present- 
ing a supposed case, for I have not time to do more. 

Suppose Great Britain, which does not recognize the principle that "free 
ships make free goods," and Russia to be engaged in war after the treaty, the 
United States being neutral. 

1. Would it not be greatly for our interest (more particularly as from our 
character we shall generally be a neutral nation) if our ships could carry the 
goods of Englishmen to Russia and all over the world, without these goods 
being subjected to capture by the armed vessels of Russia ? 

3. Would not great embarrassments arise if Russian vessels of war, after 
ascertaining that a vessel belonged to a citizen of the United States, which is 



NEGOTIATION OF TREATIES. 165 

all they could do under the general principle, should then under the proviso 
be permitted to inquire into the ownership of the cargo, and if they sus- 
pected it belonged in whole or in part to English subjects, to seize and take 
it before a prize court ? 

3. This proviso could only have been introduced to force England into 
the adoption of the rule that " the flag covers the cargo ; " but how can it 
produce that effect ? It will render the property of an Englishman as inse- 
cure on board an American as a British vessel ; it being equally liable to 
seizure in either. But let the rule be general, let our flag protect the cargo, 
no matter who may be the owner, and then English merchants will have the 
strongest inducements to employ our navigation. 

4. Would not the promise make the treaty itself a felo de se, whenever 
Russia shall be at war with a nation which does not recognize the general 
rule? 

5. If England should at any time be neutral and we at war, the general 
rule adopted between us and Russia will not prevent us from capturing our 
enemies' goods on board British vessels. 

6. These suggestions become of much more importance when we consider 
that we may have similar treaties with many nations. 

These crude remarks are merely intended to direct your attention to the 
subject. I consider it very important and should like to hear from the de- 
partment in relation to it as soon as possible. We shall first take up the 
treaty of commerce, I presume ; indeed Count Nesselrode has asked for my 
views in writing on that subject. 

It might be of consequence to me to have a copy of our treaty with 
Turkey.] 

In haste, I am, with the greatest respect, 
Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 

P. S. Please remember me to the members of your cabinet and also your 
family. 

2d P. S. Captain Ramsay, for whom I had obtained a courier's passport, 
will not go to-day ; but I have fortunately just heard of a vessel about sailing 
for Boston, by which I send this. 

At a little later period, Mr. Buchanan formally submitted to 
Count Nesselrode the propositions which he had been instructed 
to make as the basis of a commercial treaty, and those which 
related to the subject of maritime rights, or the rights of neu- 
trals during war. JS^othing definite was arrived at on either topic 
until the Sth-lOth of October. On that day, Mr. Buchanan 
received a note from Count Nesselrode, requesting him to call 
at the Foreign Ofiice on the succeeding Monday. What followed 



166 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

was certainly a most remarkable occurrence. The comit began 
the conversation by asking whether the answer which he was 
about to make to the American propositions would be in time 
to reach Washington before the next meeting of Congress. Mr. 
Buchanan replied that it would not, but said that it might 
reach Washington within a fortnight after that period. The 
count then asked if the answer could be sent immediately. Mr, 
Buchanan replied that if, as he hoped, the answer should be 
favorable, he would take measures to send it at once. The count 
then stated reasons, which had led the emperor to decline the 
American proposition for concluding a treaty of commerce and 
navigation between the two countries, but made no allusion to 
the proposed treaty concerning maritime rights. Here tliere 
was a dilemma, for which Mr. Buchanan was not prepared by 
anything that had preceded ; for although he was well aware 
of the interior opposition to a commercial treaty in the Bussian 
cabinet, and was not very sanguine of success, he had placed his 
hopes on Count Nesselrode's ability and disposition to over- 
come that opposition. That the emperor had come to an un- 
favorable decision, and that Count Nesselrode had been di- 
rected to communicate it, was rather an unexpected event. 
Nesselrode, however, contrived to make Mr. Buchanan under- 
stand that the emperor had yielded in this matter to the opin- 
ions of Count Cancrene, the minister of finance, and of M. de 
Blondorff, the minister of the interior, and that the result had 
not been in accordance with his, Nesselrode's, judgment. Such 
an occurrence could hardly have taken place in an English cab- 
inet, still less would it have been communicated to a foreign 
minister ; but in Russia it w^as perhaps not uncommon for the 
prime minister to be overruled by his colleagues. Bat Count 
Nesselrode knew a way to get over all such difficulties ; and he 
proceeded in a very characteristic manner to accomplish what 
he intended. He went over anew the whole ground, encour- 
aging Mr. Buchanan to develop again the reasons which made 
a commercial treaty desi^:able for both countries and finally re- 
quested him to put them in the shape of a formal note. He 
then assumed a very confidential tone, which may be best de- 
scribed by Mr. Buchanan's own account, given in his despatch 
of October 19-21, to the secretary of state. 



DIPLOMATIC INTRIGUES. 167 

"Towards the conclusion of the interview he laid aside altogether, or at 
least appeared to do so, the wary diplomatist, and his manners became frank 
and candid. He made the request and repeated it, that I should submit a 
new proposition for the conclusion of a commercial treaty, and accompany it 
by an abstract of the explanations which I had just made, impressing it upon 
me to advert especially to the trade with the Black Sea, and the moral in- 
fluence, to use his own expression, which such a treaty might have on the 
people of the United States. I told him I should do so with pleasure. He 
then requested me to send it as soon as I conveniently could and he would 
immediately submit it to the emperor, and give me an answer before the 
departure of the last steamboat, which Avas to leave St. Petersburg on 
Wednesday, the 19-21 instant. He afterwards asked me whether I intended 
to send the note to Washington which he had delivered to me, by the next 
steamboat ; and from his manner it was easy to perceive that he wished I 
would not. I replied that I should certainly delay sending it until the last 

steamboat, hoping that in the meantime I might receive a better one 

Some conversation, not necessary to be repeated, was held on other sub- 
jects, and I took my leave much satisfied with the interview and arguing 
from it the most happy results, should Count Nesselrode possess sufficient 
influence to carry his own wishes into effect, against those of Count Can- 
crene." 

In a short time after Mr. Biichanan''s new communication 
had been sent to Count ]S"esseh-ode, a further step was taken in 
what might ahnost be called a diplomatic intrigue. Baron de 
Brunnow, a counsellor of state, and the confidential friend of 
Count l^esselrode, called upon Mr. Buchanan, and informing 
him that he came by the count's request, said that Mr. Bu- 
chanan's views contained in his note were perfectly satisfactory 
to the count, and that they were so clearly and distinctly ex- 
pressed that they could not be misapprehended, and that the 
count would be happy to become the medium of presenting 
them to the emperor, and would use his influence to have them 
adopted. But in order that nothing might appear which would 
show that Count Nesselrode had requested Mr. Buchanan to 
submit a new proposition for a commercial treaty, the baron 
desired Mr. Buchanan to modify the language of his note, so 
that it would not appear to be written in compliance with any 
wish which the count had expressed. Perceiving the struggle 
which was about to ensue in the cabinet between Nesselrode 
and Cancrene, Mr. Buchanan at once agreed to change the 
phraseology of his note. Baron Brunnow requested that it 



168 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

might be done immediately, as it was Count Nesselrode's in- 
tention to have the note translated into French on that day, 
and to go with it to the emperor on the next morning, so that 
an answer might, if possible, be obtained before the departure 
of the next steamboat. Baron Brunnow made no seci"et of 
Count Cancrene's opposition to all commercial treaties, but 
said that Count Nesselrode saw no objection to such a one as 
Mr. Buchanan had proposed ; that he had repeated Mr. Bu- 
chanan's observation that " statesmen often found it expedient 
to yield even to honest prejudices for the pui"pose of promoting 
the public good," and had said that he had no doubt such a 
treaty would produce a benelicial effect on the American trade 
with the Black Sea. 

This mode of facilitating Count IS^esseh'ode's movements 
being arranged, the conversation between Mr. Buchanan and 
Baron Brunnow turned upon the proposed treaty concerning mar- 
itime rights, of which an account will be given hereafter. Ex- 
cepting the interchange of formal notes relating to the commer- 
cial treaty, nothing further occurred until the 31st of October, 
when Mr. Buchanan calling at the Foreign Office by appoint- 
ment, found Count Nesselrode " in fine sjiirits and in the most 
frank and candid mood." But he said that it would be impos- 
sible to conclude the treaty before the end of a fortnight. In 
making the arrangements for sending to the United States the 
new notes which had passed, the count expressed the strongest 
desire that the British government should not obtain any 
knowledge that such a treaty was in contemplation ; and for 
this reason he offered to send Mr. Buchanan's despatch for 
Washington by a Russian courier, to be delivered to Mr. Vail, 
the American charge in London. Mr. Buchanan preferred 
another channel of communication with Mr. Vail, and through 
that channel his despatch was sent off on the following day. 
The attitude in which it left the whole affair of the connnercial 
treaty was thus summed up by Mr. Buchanan : 

" For several weeks before the receipt of Count Nesselrode's first note, I 
had but little expectation of concluding a commercial treaty. Mr. Kielcben, 
lately appointed consul at Boston by this government, informed me, some 
time ago, that Count Cancrene had resolved never to consent to the conclu- 
sion of such a treaty with any power whilst he continued in tlie ministry, 



SIGNING THE TREATY. 169 

and his influence with the emperor, particularly on commercial subjects, was 
universally admitted to be very great. He has the character of being an 
obstinate man ; and I scarcely allowed myself to hope, either that he would 
change, or be defeated in his purpose. I feel the more happy, therefore, in 
being able to congratulate you upon our present favorable prospects." 

Nothing was heard from Count !N^esseh'ode for nearly a 
month; but on the evening of ]^ovember 21st Mr. Buchanan 
met him at a party. The count took Mr. Buchanan aside, and 
told him that he believed he was now ready for him, and pro- 
posed to send him a project of a treaty of connnerce which 
should be founded on the provisions of the American treaties 
with Prussia, Sweden and Austria. Long interviews and oral 
discussions of this project then took place at the Foreign Office 
between Mr. Buchanan, Count Nesselrode, Baron Brunnow and 
Baron Sacken. In these discussions Mr. Buchanan evinced the 
most thorough acquaintance with the whole subject, and 
gave the Russian statesmen information which was new to 
them and greatly surprised them. At length all the details 
of the treaty were settled, and by the 17th of December it was 
prepared for signature in duplicate, in the French and English 
languages. Still the treaty was not yet signed. For the pur- 
pose of expediting the matter, Mr. Buchanan made a suggestion 
that as the emperor's fete day, or his saint's day, was to be cele- 
brated on the 18th December, N. S., that it should be signed 
on that day. Count Nesselrode was pleased with the sugges- 
tion, and said that Mr. Buchanan's wish should be gratified, if 
possible. Baron Sacken doubted if it would be practicable, but 
the count said it must be done, and that Mr. Clay, the American 
Secretary of Legation, could assist them in making the copies. 
This occurred on the 13th of December, N. S. It was not, 
however, until Mr. Buchanan was in the presence of the em- 
peror, at his levee on the morning of the 18th, that he felt 
finally assured that the treaty would be signed, although Coimt 
N^esselrode had informed him on the 15th that he was author- 
ized to sign it. What occurred at the emperor's levee will be 
best told by Mr. Buchanan himself: 

On Tuesday morning, the 18th, we went to the emperor's levee ; and on 
this occasion a singular occurrence took place in relation to the treaty. 



j^ij/Q LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The strictest secrecy had been preserved throughout the negotiation. In- 
deed I do not believe an individual, except those immediately concerned, had 
the least idea that negotiations were even pending. A rumor of the refusal of 
this o-overnment to make the treaty had circulated two months ago, and I 
was then repeatedly informed in conversation, that it was in vain for any 
nation to attempt to conclude a treaty of commerce with the Russian gov- 
ernment, whilst Count Cancrene continued to be minister of finance. Count 
Nesselrode had on one occasion intimated a desire that the British govern- 
ment should not obtain a knowledge that negotiations were proceeding, 
and this was an additional reason on our part for observing the greatest cau- 
tion. 

It ought to be remembered, however, that this intimation was given be- 
fore information had reached St. Petersburg of the conclusion of the late 
treaty between France and England in relation to the Belgian question. The 
diplomatic corps, according to the etiquette, were arranged in a line to re- 
ceive the emperor and empress ; and Mr. Bligh, the English minister, occupied 
the station immediately below myself. You may judge of my astonishment 
when the emperor, accosting me in French, in a tone of voice which could be 
heard by all around, said, " I signed the order yesterday that the treaty 
should be executed according to your wishes ; " and then immediately turn- 
ing to Mr. Bligh asked him to become the interpreter of this information. He 
(Mr. Bligh) is a most amiable man, and his astonishment and embarrassment 
were so striking that I felt for him most sincerely. This incident has already 
given rise to considerable speculation among the knowing ones of St. Peters- 
burg ; probably much more than it deserves. 

I ought to remark that when I was presented to the emperor, I under- 
stood but little, I might almost say no, French ; and there was then an in- 
terpreter present. Supposing this still to be the case, the emperor must have 
thought that an interpreter was necessary, and he was correct to a certain 
extent, for I have not yet had sufficient practice to attempt to speak French 
in the presence of the whole court. I trust this may not long be the case ; 
but I still more ardently hope I may not very long continue in a situation 
where it will be necessary to speak that language. 

There can be no doubt but that all which occurred was designed on the 
part of the emperor ; and what must have rendered it still more embarrassing 
to lh\ Bligh was, that one object of Lord Durham's mission is said to have 
been the conclusion of a commercial treaty with Russia. 

After the emperor had retired, Mr. Bligh, in manifest confusion, told me 
he feared he had been a very bad interpreter, and asked me what kind of a 
treaty we had been concluding with Russia, to which I replied it was a 
treaty of commerce. 

Count Nesselrode was not present at the moment, and from his manner 
when I informed him of the incident, I believe he had not previously re- 
ceived any intimation of the emperor's intention to make such a disclosure. 
The count and myself afterwards proceeded from the palace to the 



SIGNING THE TREATY. I7I 

Foreign Office and there signed the treaty. The only persons present were 
Baron Brunnow and Baron Sacken. On this occasion but little worthy of 
repetition occurred. They all exhibited the greatest cordiality and good will, 
and the count emphatically declared that he believed we had that day com- 
pleted a work which would result in benefits to both nations. 

On taking my leave, I expressed no more than I felt, in thanking him for 
his kind and candid conduct throughout the whole negotiation, and he paid 
me some compliments in return 

Thus, sir, you have in my different despatches a faithful history of the 
whole progress of the negotiation up to its termination. Independently of the 
positive advantages secured to our commerce by the treaty, and of the stipu- 
lation prohibiting Kussia from granting favors to any other nation at our 
expense, there is another consideration which deserves attention. I think I 
cannot be mistaken in asserting that if the feelings of the Russians towards 
our country in the days of the Emperor Alexander were of a kindly charac- 
ter, which I have no reason to doubt, they have undergone some change 
since the accession of his present majesty. In a future despatch I may 
probably state my reasons for this impression. The very fact, however, of 
concluding the present treaty and thus distinguishing us from other commer- 
cial nations, connected with the time and manner in which his majesty 
thought proper to announce it, will have a powerful influence favorable to our 
country among the members of a court where every look and every word of 
the emperor is noted and observed almost as if he were a Divinity. I may 
say that I have already experienced a change : even Count Cancrene, in a 
conversation with Baron Steiglitz of this city, has expressed his assent to the 
treaty, observing at the same time that the United States formed an excep- 
tion to his general principles on this subject. He added a compliment to 
myself of such a character as I know I do not deserve, and therefore I shall 
not repeat.* 

In announcing to the Secretary of State (on the 20th of De- 
cember, 1832, N. S.) the conchision of the commercial treaty, 
Mr. Buchanan said : 

" I have now the pleasure of transmitting to you a treaty of commerce 
and navigation, which was signed on Tuesday last, the 18th instant, between 
the United States and Russia, by Count Nesselrode and myself. I congratu- 
late the President, that after many fruitless attempts have been made by our 
Government to conclude such a treaty, it has at last been accomplished. 

* It should be said here that the whole course of this negotiation shows that the details 
of the treaty were entrusted largely to Mr. Buchanan's discretion. At that time, indeed, it 
was impracticable for an American minister in Europe, and especially at St. Petersburg, to 
be guided from day to day, or even from month to month, by the Secrctai-y of State. The 
Atlantic had not then been crossed by steam. I have gone through with the minute discus- 
sions which took place between Mr. Buchanan and the Russian Foreign Office, but have not 
deemed it necessary to display them to my readers. They evince on his part a thorough ac- 
quaintance with the whole subject, and a remarkable power of carrying his points. 



173 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

" Like yourself, I confess, I did not entertain sanguine hopes of success 
when I left Washington. The despatch of Mr. Randolph upon this subject was 
indeed very discouraging. The difficulties in prospect, however, served only to 
inspire me with a stronger resolution to accomphsh, if practicable, the wishes 
of the President. This I trust has been done without the slightest sacrifice, 
in my person, of either the dignity or the honor of the country. Should my 
conduct throughout this difficult, and in some respects extraordinary negotia- 
tion, receive his approbation and that of the Senate, I shall be amply com- 
pensated for my labors." 

That Mr. Buchanan was not equally successful in concluding 
a treaty concerning maritime rights is a matter that admits of 
easy explanation. In the communication which was made to 
him by Count Nesselrode in October (1832), there was conveyed 
a respectful refusal to make the commercial treaty. At the 
interview which took place afterward between Baron Brun- 
now and Mr. Buchanan, at tlie house of the latter, after they 
had arranged for re-opening the negotiation concerning a com- 
mercial treaty, there was a conversation on the other subject, 
which was thus reported by Mr. Buchanan to the Secretary of 
State: 

After our conversation ended on this subject, — I referred to that portion 
of the note of Count ISTesselrode which declined our offer to conclude a treaty 
on maritime rights, and said that the President would probably not be pre- 
pared for this refusal. I told him that on the 28th August, 1828, N. S., a 
few months before the election of G-eneral Jackson, Baron Krudener had 
addressed a communication to the Department of State which gave a strong 
assurance that the emperor was Avilling to conclude such a treaty. That 
when General Jackson assumed the reins of Government in the month of 
March following, he had found this communication on file, and that was the 
piincipal reason why he had given Mr. Randolph instructions to conclude a 
treaty concerning neutral rights. I was therefore surprised no allusion what- 
ever had been made to this important letter in the note of Count Nesselrode, 
and that he had passed it over as though it had never existed, whilst he 
referred to the note he had addressed to Mr. Middleton so long ago as the 
1st of February, 1824, for the purpose of explaining the views of the imperial 
government at the present moment. 

I then produced the communication of Baron Krudener to Mr. Brent of 
the 16-28th of August, 1828, and read it to Baron Brunnow. After he had 
perused it himself, he expressed his surprise at its contents, and said he did 
not believe a copy of it had been transmitted to the Foreign Office ; that he 
could say for himself he had never seen it before. He thought the baron 
must have Rone further than his instructions had warranted ; and that mstead 



TREATY RESPECTING MARITIME RIGHTS DECLINED. I73 

of expressing the willingness of the emperor to adopt hy mutual agreement, 
the principles concerning neutral rights proposed by the United States, he 
ought merely to have expressed the concurrence of the emperor in those prin- 
ciples and his desire to preserve and protect them. He added that these 
rights were best maintained by the power of nations, and we had nobly de- 
fended them .during our late war with England. I replied, that was very 
true, and the United States were becoming more and more powerful every 
year, and had less and less occasion to rely upon treaties for the maintenance 
of their neutral rights. 

I afterwards remarked that I thought the count, from the tenor of his note, 
had probably overlooked one circumstance of importance in considering this 
subject, as he had placed the refusal chiefly on the ground that it would be use- 
less for only two powers to conclude such a treaty between themselves. That 
the fact was, the United States already had treaties of a similar character with 
several nations, which I enumerated, and that if Russia had concluded this 
treaty, in case she should hereafter unfortunately be engaged in war with any 
of these powers, the property of her subjects would be secure from capture 
by their ships of war, on board of American vessels. He replied that as to 
Prussia, Sweden, and Holland there was little danger of any war between 
them and Russia; and that we had no such treaties with the maritime powers 
with wliom Russia was likely to be engaped in hostilities. 

(Evidently, as I supposed, alluding to England and France.) 

In the course of the conversation, I regretted that I had never seen the 
note addressed by Count Nesselrode to Mi-. Middleton in February, 1824, 
and that there was no copy of it in the archives of the legation here. He 
then said he would take pleasure in sending me a copy, and thought he might 
assure me with perfect confidence, from the feelings of Count Nesselrode to- 
wards myself, that he would be happy to send me at all times copies of any 
other papers I might desire from the Foreign Office. 

He at first proposed to repeat this conversation to Count Nesselrode. I 
replied I had no objection. It was not intended by me as an attempt to 
renew the negotiation at the present time ; but merely to make some sugges- 
tions to him in free conversation. Before he took leave, however, he said 
he believed that as his mission to me had been of a special character, he 
would report nothing to the count but what had a relation to the com- 
mercial treaty — except that I desired to have a copy of his note to Mr. 
Middleton; but that after the other subject was finally disposed of, he 
thought I ought to mention these things to Count Nesselrode myself. I told 
him I probably might, that what I had said to him on this subject, had 
been communicated in a frank and friendly spirit, and I considered it alto- 
gether unofficial. No doubt he repeated every word. 

"What is here related occurred in the autumn of 1832, and 
the subject of maritime rights was not again alluded to until 



174 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the following spring. Writing to General Jackson a private 
letter on the 29th of May, 1S33, Mr. Buchanan said : 

I fear I shall not be able to conclude the treaty concerning maritime 
rights, though I shall use my best exertions. My late attempt to introduce 
the subject was not very successful, as you will have seen from my last 
despatch. 

I have now, after much reflection, determined on my plan of operations. 
It would not be consistent with the high character of our Grovernment, or 
with what I am confident would be your wishes, that I should make another 
direct official proposition, without a previous intimation that it would be well 
received ; and we might thus be subjected to another direct refusal so soon after 
the last. It is therefore my intention to present my views of the subject in 
the form of an unofficial note, and to express them with as much clearness 
and force as I am capable [of]. I shall not in this note seek a renewal of the 
negotiation ; though I shall leave it clearly to be inferred that sucli is my 
desire. If they should not move in the business afterwards, it would neither 
be proper nor dignified to press them further. 

I am convinced they are endeavoring to manage England at present, and 
that this is an unpropitious moment to urge them to adopt principles of public 
law which would give offence to that nation. Besides, Russia has now a 
large navy, and but a small commercial marine ; and it is not for such a power 
as she now believes herself to be, to desire to change the law of nations in 
such a manner as to abridge her belligerent rights. The principle " that free 
ships shall make free goods," will always be most popular with nations who 
possess a large commercial marine and a small navy, and whose policy is 
peaceful. But I shall do my best. I hope this question may be determined 
by the beginning of August, as I should then have the opportunity of seeing 
something more of Europe, and yet reach the United States about the end 
of November. By the last accounts, my mother's health was decidedly 
better, so that on that ground I need not so much hasten my return, 

I have received many letters which give me strong assurances that I shall 
be elected to the Senate. I confess, however, that I feel very doubtful of 
success. The men in Pennsylvania, who have risen to power by the popu- 
larity of your name, while in heart they are opposed to you, will do every 
thing they can to prevent my election. The present governor is greatly 
influenced by their counsels, and his patronage is very great and very power- 
ful. Besides, the Nullifiers and their organ, the Telegraph, will show me no 
quarter. Thank God ! I know how to be content with a private station, and 

I shall leave the Legislature to do just as they please 

Our excellent consul here is in very bad health from the severity of the 
climate. His physician says that he must travel, and that immediately : but 
I entertain some doubts whether he has sufficient strength left for the purpose. 
It is said, however, that he was restored once before by a change of climate, 
when in an equally weak condition. He purposes to set off in a few weeks, 



COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESS. 175 

and Mr. Clay, who will have Httle else to attend to, will do his business 
cheerfully during his absence. I sincerely wish he could obtain a situation in 
a milder climate. It would be a most happy circumstance for the commerce 
of the United States if all our consuls were like Mr. G. After sending my 
note to Count Nesselrode, I intend to visit Moscow for a few days, as he is 
to be absent himself I beg to present my respects to your family, and to 
Messrs. Barry, Taney, McLane and Woodbury. 

The simple truth is, that the Russian government, since the 
intimation made by Baron Kriidener just before General 
Jackson became President, had changed its mind in regard to 
the subject of maritime rights. The reason for decUning to 
make the treaty in 1832-33, as explained by Count Pozzo di 
Borgo to Mr. Buchanan, in Paris, accords entirely with what 
Mr. Buchanan had learned at St. Petersburg.* The attitude 
of the Belgian question, and the relations of Pussia towards 
England, precluded the acceptance of the American proposal 
to establish by treaty between Russia and the United States 
the principle that " free ships make free goods." 

All of Mr. Buchanan's official duties at St. Petersburg were 
not, however, so entirely pleasant as the negotiation of the 
commercial treaty. While this negotiation was in its early 
stage. Baron Sacken, who had been left by Baron Krudener as 
Russian charge d'affaires at Washington, made to the Secretary 
of State a somewhat oifensive communication, complaining of 
certain articles in The Glohe, the official paper of the American 
Government, concerning the conduct of Russia towards Poland. 
The complaint was doubtless made in ignorance of the fact that 
although the Globe was the official gazette of our Government, 
the President had no control over or responsibility for its edi- 
torial articles, or the articles which it copied from English or 
French journals. The freedom of the press in this country 
was not understood by Russian officials ; and although it does 
not appear that Baron Sacken's act was directed from St. 
Petersburg, there can be no doubt that in making the complaint 
he did what he believed would be acceptable to his superiors at 
home. He, however, considerably overshot the mark, in the 
tone and manner of his communication to the Department of 

♦ See post an account of Mr. Buchanan's conversation with Pozzo di Borgo in Paris. 



176 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

State, and it became necessary for the President to direct Mr. 
Buchanan to Lay the matter before the Russian government. 
This was done by a despatch from Mr. Livingston, courteous 
but firm, pointing out the impossibility of exercising in this 
country any governmental constraint over the press, and making 
very clear the offensive imputation of insincerity on the part 
of the President contained in Baron Sacken's note. This 
occurrence was not known at St. Petersburg, at least it was not 
known to Mr. Buchanan, while the negotiation of the commer- 
cial treaty was pending. On the receipt of Mr, Livingston's 
despatch, which was written early in January, 1833, Mr. Bu- 
chanan had an interview with Count l^esselrode on the subject, 
of which he gave the following account to the Secretary of 
State : 

February 26th, 1833. 

On yesterday at 2 o'clock, p. m., I had a conference with the count. I in- 
quired if he had yet received from Washington the answer of Mr. Livingston 
to Baron Sacken's note of the 14th of October last; to which he replied in 
the affirmative. After expressing my regret that anything unpleasant should 
have occurred at Washington in the intercourse between the two govern- 
ments, whilst everything here had been proceeding so harmoniously, I 
observed : 

That Baron Sacken himself, in his note to Mr. Brent, had admitted that 
the President, throughout the whole course of his administration, had con- 
stantly expressed a desire to be on friendly terms with Russia. But the 
President's feelings had not been confined to mere official declarations to the 
Russian government ; they had been expressed, in strong terms, before the 
world in each of his annual messages to Congress, previous to the date of 
Baron Sacken's note. Besides they had been always manifested by his 
conduct. 

The baron [I said], with a full knowledge of these facts, had addressed this 
note to Mr. Brent, which was not only offensive in its general tone, but more 
especially so in imputing a want of sincerity to the President, and in effect 
charging him with tacitly encouraging the abuse of the emperor by the 
American newspapers, whilst he was professing friendship towards the Russian 
government. Such a charge was well calculated to make a strong impression 
upon General Jackson, a man who, during his whole life, had been distin- 
guished for sincerity and frankness. When, after Mr. Clay's departure, I had 
perused this note, with which his excellency had been good enough to furnish 
me, I was convinced the President could not pass it over in silence ; and I 
had since been astonished not to have received, until very recently, any com- 
munication on the subject. 



BARON SACKEN'S IMPRUDENT NOTE. 177 

I ha,d now discovered that the reason of this delay was an anxious desire 
on the part of the President to avoid everything unpleasant in the intercourse 
between the two countries ; and had formed an expectation that Baron Sacken 
himself, after reflection, would have rendered it unnecessary to bring the subject 
before the imperial government. In this hope the President had been dis- 
appointed. Nearly two months had transpired before Mr. Livingston 
answered his note. In the meantime, a fair opportunity was afforded him to 
withdraw it, and a verbal intimation given that this would be more agreeable 
to the President than to take the only notice of it Avhich he could take with 
propriety. Mr. Livingston had supposed that, under the circumstances, the 
baron would have felt it to be his duty to visit Washington, wliere, at a 
verbal conference, the affair might have been satisfactorily adjusted. In this 
opinion he found he was mistaken. At length, on the 4th December, he 
addressed the baron this answer, which places in a striking light the most 
offensive part of his note, the charge of insincerity. Even in it, however, 
the President's feelings of amity for Russia and respect for the emperor are 
reiterated. 

After this answer, Mr. Livingston waited nearly another month, confident 
that a disavowal of any offensive intention would, at least, have been made. 
This not having been done, he has sent me instructions, under date of the 3d 
Januaiy last, to bring the subject under the notice of the imperial govern- 
ment; and it is for that purpose I have solicited the present interview. 

The count expressed his regret that any misunderstanding should have 
occurred between Baron Sacken and Mr. Livingston ; it was evident the 
former never could have intended anything offensive to the President, as he 
had taken the precaution of submitting his note of the 14th of October to 
Mr. Livingston in New York before it was transmitted to the Department, 
who not only made no objection to it at the time, but informed him it should 
be answered in a few days. The count then asked if Mr. Livingston had not 
communicated this circumstance to me in his despatches. I replied in the 
negative, and from my manner intimated some doubt as to its existence ; 
when he took up the despatch of Baron Sacken and read to me, in French, a 
statement of this fact. He said, if Mr. Livingston had at that time objected 
to any part of the note, the baron would have immediately changed its 
phraseology. I replied that the President at least had certainly never seen 
the note previous to its receipt at the Department ; and it appeared to me 
manifestly to contain an imputation on his sincerity, and was besides offensive 
in its general character. He did not attempt to justify its language, but re- 
peated that he thought Baron Sacken never could have intended to write 
anything offensive to the President. If he had, it would have been done in 
violation of his instructions. That the feelings of the emperor as well as his 
own were of the most friendly nature towards the Government of the United 
States, and that, in particular, both the emperor and himself entertained the 
highest respect and esteem for the character of the President. That neither 
of them would ever think of sanctioning the imputation of insincerity or 

I.— 12 



178 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

anything that was dishonorable to General Jackson, and he was very sorry 
Baron Sacken had written a nute the effect of which was to wound his 
feelings. 

As the count did not still seem to be altogether satisfied that the note 
attributed insincerity to the professions of the President, I then took it up 
and pointed out in as clear and striking a manner as I could, the most offen- 
sive passages which it contained. After I had done, he repeated in substance 
what he had said before, but without any qualification whatever, expressing 
both his own sorrow and that of the emperor, that Baron Sacken should have 
written a note calculated to wound the feelings of General Jackson, or to give 
him any cause of offence. He added, that the baron either already had left, 
or would soon leave the United States ; and he had no doubt, that soon after 
the arrival of the treaty and of Baron Krudener at Washington, all matters 
would be explained to the satisfaction of the President; by Avhom, he trusted, 
this unpleasant occurrence would be entirely forgotten. 

With this explanation, I expressed myself perfectly satisfied, and assured 
him I should have great pleasure in communicating it to the President. 

He then observed that, judging from the despatch of Baron Sacken, this 
unfortunate business seemed to have been a succession of mistakes. That 
Mr. Livingston, through Mr. Kremer, had pointed out to the baron the 
exceptional parts of his note ; but whilst he was engaged in correcting them, 
and before sufficient time for this purpose liad been afforded, he had re- 
ceived Mr. Livingston's fiote of the 4th of December. 

In the course of the interview, the count read me several detached para- 
graphs from Baron Saelsen's despatch, and from their character I received the 
impression that'he had^ecome alarmed at the consequences of his own con- 
duct, and was endeavonng to justify it in the best manner he could. 

We afterwards had some conversation respecting the publications in our 
newspapers, in which allusion was made to the explanations I had given him 
on this subject in Decemitter. He stated distinctly that they were now fully 
aAvare of the difficulties which would attend any attempt to interfere with the 
press under our form of Government. 

In obedience to your instructions, I now read to him the greater part of 
Despatch No. 5, and exfrlained the nature of the only connection which our 
Government has with the official paper. After having done so, I asked him 
to consider the consequences of an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the 
administration at Washington to control the Olohe ; and told him that in that 
event, the editor, by publishing it to the world, Avould make both the em- 
peror and the President subjects of abuse throughout the Union. The press 
was essentially free in our country. Even the Congress of the United States 
had no power to pass any law for the punishment of a libel on the President. 
This subject was exclusively under the jurisdiction of the several States. 

That, it was true, editors were often influenced by the counsel of those whom 
they respected, therefore I had communicated his request to General Jackson, 
that he would advise the editor of the Globe to desist hereafter from offensive 



SENSITIVENESS OF THE EMPEROR ON POLAND. 179 

publications against Russia, but even this would be a delicate matter to pro- 
ceed from a person holding the office of President of the United States. I 
then informed him that I had been much pleased, some weeks since, to ob- 
serve in the St. Petersburg Journal an official contradiction of some of the 
acts attributed to the Russian government of Poland ; that I had sent the 
paper which contained it to the Department of State, and had no doubt it 
would be extensively published in the United States. He expressed great 
satisfaction that I had taken the trouble, and said it would be very ao'reeable 
to them to have this contradiction circulated throughout our country. 

It is scarcely worth repeating that he objected, in a good-natured manner, 
to the designation of Baron Sacken's note in the despatch as " a formal note," 
observing that a formal note always commenced with " the undersigned," and 
not the first person. This was intended to be an informal note, and that was 
the reason it had been submitted to Mr. Livingston before it was transmitted 
to the Department of State. 

I congratulate you that this unpleasant affair has had such an auspicious 
termination. We shall, I think, hear no moje complaints from this quarter, 
on the subject of publications in the American newspapers, especially if the 
editor of the Glohe should be a little more circumspect in his course hereafter. 

In regard to the subject of Polish aftairs, the treatment of 
which by the Glohe was the occasion of Baron Sacken's impru- 
dent note, it will be seen hereafter that the emperor was pecu- 
liarly sensitive to the comments of the foreign press. Mr. 
Buchanan, who had the best opportunity for observation while 
he was in St, Petersburg, formed the opinion that the personal 
attacks upon the emperor, on account of the conduct of his gov- 
ernment towards the Poles, with which the English, French, 
and American journals abounded, were to a certain extent un- 
just ; that the inveterate national hatreds with which the Rus- 
sian and Polish races regarded each other, were at the bottom 
of most of the difficulties with which the emperor had to con- 
tend ; and that the fact that Russian officers were intrusted with 
power in Poland over a race whom they hated and by whom they 
were hated in turn, inevitably led to many of the cruelties and 
oppressions with which the world outside of Russia resounded, 
and which were charged upon the emperor personally, as if he had 
designed them. Buchanan did not palliate or excuse the conduct 
of the Russian government towards the Poles ; nor does he seem 
on any occasion, when it was proper for him to refer to it, to 
have allowed any one to suppose that he defended it. But in 
writing to his own Government or to his friends at home, he 



180 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

did not hesitate to say that lie thought many of the causes 
which produced the oppression that so roused the indignation 
of tlie work], lay deep in the national hatred between the two 
races, and were not to be imputed to an arbitrary and cruel 
temper in tlie emperor. 

lie looked upon the despotism which he saw with the calm 
eye of an observer who could comprehend its character and 
trace its operations, without doing injustice to the reigning 
monarcL He saw a vast iiation entirely incapable of any thing 
like constitutional liberty, and governed by the absolute will of 
one man, to obey whom w^as at once a point of religion, loyalty 
and patriotism. Between the nobility and the throne, there 
was no middle class, capable of thinking or acting upon any 
political subject ; and the nobility, as a rule, were capable and 
desirous of no other political training, ideas or aspirations than 
such as would fit them for the part of useful servants of an em- 
peror whom they adored, and of a system which constituted 
their country the most peculiar and the least free of any in 
Europe. The statesmen who were formed under such a system 
w'ere, as might naturally be expected, accomplished in many 
ways, subtle and often powerful reasoners ; and they were not 
seldom among the ablest men of the age. When they were 
made to understand how completely, as Mr. Buchanan said, 
they and we were " political antipodes," they found no diffi- 
culty in yielding to the necessity of respecting a state of things 
in America wdiich was so unlike any thing that they knew at 
home. At first, Count Nesselrode could not understand how a 
government could have an official organ, and yet disclaim re- 
sponsibility to a foreign power for what that organ said in its 
editorial columns. But when it was explained to him that the 
American Government did disclaim that responsibility, and was 
obliged to do so by the nature of its political institutions, he did 
not make it his business to argue the point, but gracefully ac- 
cepted the explanation and i)ut an end to the whole of the mis- 
understanding. 

It must be confessed, however, that while Mr. Buchanan 
fully and firmly carried out his instructions and procured all the 
admission that his own Government desired, in regard to Baron 
Sacken's note, it was a pretty fine distinction that his Govern- 



SENSITIVENESS OF THE EMPEROR ON POLAND. 181 

ment had to draw. It was perfectly true that the Glohe was 
the official gazette of the American Government, and yet that 
its editorial columns could not be legally controlled by the 
President. Still it might be a question whether an American 
administration should have had an official organ, with which it 
was connected on such terms that the editor or conductor was 
just as independent of its influence or its power, as if he pub- 
lished a newspaper that was not connected in any way with the 
Government. Both at home and abroad, the editorial columns 
of the Glohe were liable to be regarded as speaking the senti- 
ments of the administration ; and when it became necessary to 
disclaim that they did so, the explanation, although made upon 
undeniable facts, was an awkward one to make. Mr. Buchanan 
certainly felt it to be so, for in writing to the Secretary of State, 
after he had obtained from Count Kesselrode all the disavowal 
that was desired, he said : 

I have time but for few remarks upon this strange interview. 

It serves to show how indispensable it is that our minister to this country 
should be kept advised of every proceeding in the United States which may 
aflfect the relations between the two nations. He has indeed a most difficult 
part to perform. He must be cautious in the extreme, and is under the habit- 
ual necessity of concealing his real sentiments. It is utterly impossible for 
these people to realize the state of affairs in the United States. "We are 
political antipodes, and hence the great difficulty of maintaining those friendly 
relations which are so important to the interests of our country. I know 
not when the despatch was received containing a copy of Baron Sacken's 
note to Mr. Brent, or what influence it might have had upon the negotiation 
had it reached him [Nesselrode] at an earlier period. Of this, however, I 
feel confident, that, if a copy of this note had been transmitted [to me] im- 
mediately after its receipt, this unpleasant interview might have been avoided 
altogether 

I would suggest the poHcy of advising the editor of the Glohe to abstain 
at least from severe editorial paragraphs respecting the emperor of Eussia. 
Neither the cause of Poland nor of human liberty could suffer by his silence 
in a country where there are so many faithful sentinels, and I should, hy 
all means, advise the publication of a strong editorial paragraph in the Glohe, 
expressing a proper sense of the good feelings of the emperor of Russia, 
evinced towards the United States in making us an exception to his general 
policy by concluding the commercial treaty. If this should be done, and 
more particularly if the President should, even in the slightest manner, allude 
to the circumstance in his inaugural address, it would be very grateful per- 
sonally to the feelings of the emperor. 



182 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I have felt it my duty to take measures, though they may be expensive to 
the Government, of having the semi-weekly Globe transmitted to me through 
the post-office from London. Will you be particular in giving directions 
that it shall be regularly forwarded from New York by every packet. It is 
true it Avill be read at the post-office here; but should it contain anything 
offi3nsive, I shall know it almost as soon as this government and before the 
Russian minister at Washington can have an opportunity of transmitting any 
inflammatory commentaries. I assure you, I feel the delicacy of my position ; 
but knowing your distinguished abiUties and long experience, if I could but 
only attract your special regard to this mission, I think, between us, we 
might, in perfect consistency with the high and independent character of our 
own country, keep his imperial majesty in a state of better feeling towards 
us than almost any other nation. We have much to gain by such a course 
and nothing to lose. 

I requested Mr. Yail, some time ago, to send me the semi-weekly Ghhe 
by mail from London. Although this may be expensive to the Government, 
it cannot be avoided, and it is absolutely necessary that I should receive it. 
It would seem, however, that the department has ceased forwarding them to 
London. Will you be kind enough to give directions that they shall be sent, 
in a separate parcel, by every Liverpool packet from New York. 



CHAPTER IX. 

1832— 1833. 

GENERAL Jackson's second election — gkave public events at home 

REFLECTED IN MR. BTJCHANAN's LETTERS FROM HIS FRIENDS — FEEL- 
INGS OF GENERAL JACKSON TOWARDS THE " NULLIFIERS " — MOVE- 
MENTS IN PENNSYLVANIA FOR ELECTING MR. BUCHANAN TO THE SEN- 
ATE OP THE UNITED STATES — HE MAKES A JOURNEY TO MOSCOW 

RETURN TO ST. PETERSBURG — DEATH OF HIS MOTHER— SINGULAR 
INTERVIEW WITH THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS AT HIS AUDIENCE OF 
LEAVE. 

IV /|"R. BUCIIAlSrAlN', as the reader has seen, went abroad 
_LVJ_ in the spring of 1832. Events of great consequence oc- 
curred at home during his absence. The great debate in the Sen- 
ate on nullification, between Mr, Webster and Col. Ilajne, which 
took place in 1830, had not been followed in South Carolina 
by any surrender of the doctrine maintained by the Nulliliers. 
In I^ovember, 1832, the people of South Carolina, assembled in 
convention, adopted their celebrated ordinance which declared 
the existing tarifi' law of the United States null and void within 
her limits, as an unconstitutional exercise of power. General 
Jackson who had been re-elected President in the same month, 
defeating Mr. Clay and all the other candidates by a ver^^ large 
majority of the electoral votes, issued his proclamation against 
the Nullifiers on the 10th of December.* Then followed the 
introduction of the " Force Bill " into the Senate in January, 
1833 ; a measure designed to secure the collection of the revenue ' 
against the obstruction of the State laws of South Carolina; 
Mr. Webster's support of this measure of the administration ; 
and the consequent expectation of a political union between 
him and General Jackson. This union, however, was pre- 
vented by an irreconcilable difference between Mr. Webster 
and General Jackson and his friends on the subject of the cur- 

* General Jackson at bis second election received 219 electoral votes out of 288. 



184 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

rency and the Bank of tlie United States. In 1S32 tlie Presi- 
dent had vetoed a bill to continue the Bank in existence. Early 
in June the President left Washington on a tour to the Eastern 
States, and while in Boston, during the month of June, he 
determined to remove the public deposits from the Bank of the 
United States, and to place them in certain selected State 
banks. These events and the excitements attending them are 
touched upon in the private letters which Mr. Buchanan re- 
ceived fi'om his friends, not the least interesting of which was 
one from General Jackson, expressing his feelings in regard to 
his proclamation in a very characteristic manner. From one 
of these letters, too, we may gather that steps were already 
taking to elect Mr. Buchanan to the Senate of the United 
States. 

[from a friend in WASHINGTON.] 

Washington City, August 1, 1833. 
Dear Sir; — 

Of course you receive regular files of American jiapers, and I shall there- 
fore not be able to give you much news of a public or political nature. 

Thinking, however, you may overlook some things of importance, I shall 
confine myself to them. The tariff bill, having passed in a modified form 
(reducing the duties on protected, and taking them off nearly altogether on 
unprotected articles, to the wants of the Government), it was supposed the 
excitement in the South would be allayed, if not entirely subdued ; but this, 
I am sorry to say, has not been the case in South Carolina. Messrs. Hayne, 
Miller, McDuflfie, etc., have published an address to the people of South Car- 
olina, in which they state, that the protective system has now become the 
settled policy of the country, and advise an open resistance to the act. Their 
legislature will, I have no doubt, recommend the same course, and before 
another year, I am firmly of the opinion, rebellion will be the order of the 
day, accompanied with all its horrors. The moment that a drop of blood is 
shed by the South, in resisting the laws, there will be a general rising of the 
people, and where is the hand that will be able to stop the fearful wrath of 
the sovereign people? Duff Green, in his paper of yesterday, said: "That 
he will write as long as writing will be of any effect ; when that ceases, he 
will adopt the sword. If South Carolina is to be sacrificed, the tyrant u-Ul be 
met on the banks of the Potomac, and many, very many, are the sons of her 
sister States who will rally beneath her standard. We say to her gallant 
sons, go on ! Yours is the cause of liberty, and the eyes of all her votaries are 
u^TOn you! " 

When language like this is held by the leader of the party, at the seat of 



LETTERS FROM HIS FRIENDS. 185 

Government of the Union, under the immediate eyes of the heads of the 
nation, and sufifered to pass unpunished, it is indeed time for the peoj^le seri- 
ously to think of a civil war. The leaders in this affair will have much to 
answer for, and be assured they will be held accountahle. 

The bank bill has passed, by a small majority, in both Houses of Congress, 
and the President (true to his principles) has returned it (without his signa- 
ture) with his objections. There appeared to be great excitement at the 
time, but it was only occasioned by the brawling of the opposition. A large 
meeting was got up in Philadelphia, at which a few Jackson men of no note 
attended, but all would not do. The next week, the Jackson men met to 
express their opinions, and they resolved unanimously to support " Andrew 
Jackson, bank or no bank, veto or no veto." At this meeting there were 
between tea and fifteen thousand people, citizens of the city and county, 
the largest meeting, I am told, that ever assembled in Philadelphia withiu 
the I'ecoUection of the oldest inhabitants. 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Washington, March 21, 1833. 

Dear Sir : — 

Your letter by Mr. Clay was handed me on his arrival. The fact of 
there being no means of conveyance, my not having ascertained Mr. Clay's 
determination in regard to his return to you, and the immense and heavy 
pressure of public business have caused me to delay my reply. Nullification, 
the corrupting influence of the Bank, the union of Calhoun and Clay, sup- 
ported by the corrupt and wicked of all parties, engaged all my attention. 
The liberty of the people requires that wicked projects, and evil combinations 
against the Government should be exposed and counteracted. 

I met nullification at its threshhold. My proclamation was well timed, as it 
at once opened the eyes of the people to the wicked designs of the Nullifiers, 
whose real motives had too long remained concealed. The public ceased to 
be deluded by the promise of securing by nullification "a peaceful and con- 
stitutional modification of the tariff." 

They investigated the subject, and saw that, although the tariff was made 
the ostensible object, a separation of the confederacy was the real purpose of 
its originators and supporters. 

The expression of public opinion elicited by the proclamation, from Maine 
to Louisiana, has so firmly repudiated the absurd doctrine of nullification and 
secession, that it is not probable that we shall be troubled with them again 
shortly. 

The advices of to-day inform us that South Carolina has repealed her 
ordinance and all the laws based upon it.* Thus die nullification and seces- 

* This I believe lo have been a mistake, in ret^pect to tlic nulliflcatiou ordinance. It was 
adopted by a State convention, and consequently could only be repealed by another conven- 
tion. This, I believe, was not done ; but the laws based upon this ordinance were probably 
repealed by the legislature after Mr. Clay's compromise. See the Life of Webster, by the 
present writer, Vol. I, p. 156. 



186 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sion, but leave behind the remembrance of their authors and abettors, which 
holds them up to scorn and indignation, and will transmit them to posterity 
as traitors to the best of governments. 

The treaty is as good a one as we could expect or desire, and if you can 
close the other as satisfactorily, it will be a happy result, and place you in 
the highest rank of our able and fortunate diplomatists. 

Mr. Clay has conversed with me freely, and has determined, under all the 
circumstances, to return to you. 

If Mr. Clay had not taken this determination, be well assured that your 
request in respect to his successor would have received my most anxious 
attention. You should have had one in whom you could with safety confi(ie. 
I had thought of Mr. Vail, now at London, who has signified his inclination 
to remain abroad, as secretary of legation, when relieved by a minister. 

Mr. Clay can be left as charg^d'affaires when your duty to your aged 
mother may make it necessary for you to return to her and your country. 

Knowing, as I do, that you will not leave your post until you bring to a 
close the negotiation now under discussion, I have said to the Secretary of 
State to grant you permission to return whenever you may ask it. But 
should an emergency arise which will render it inconvenient, if not im- 
possible, for you to write and receive an answer from the state department 
before, from the feeble health of your mother, it may be necessary for you to 
return, you will consider yourself as being hereby authorized to leave the 
court of Russia, and return, leaving Mr. Clay in charge of our affixirs there. 

I must refer you to Mr. Clay, and the newspapers, which I have requested 
the Secretary of State to send you, for the news and politics of the day. I 
niust, however, add, that in the late election, good old Democratic Pennsyl- 
vania has greatly increased my debt of gratitude to her, which I can only 
attempt to discharge by renewed and increasing vigilance and exertions in 
so administering the Government as to perpetuate the prosperity and happi- 
ness of the whole people. 

Accept of my best wishes for your health and happiness, and for your 
safe return to your country and friends. Give my kind respects to Mr. 
Barry, and believe me to be sincerely 

Your friend, 

Andrew Jackson. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GENERAL JACKSON.] 

St. Petersburg, May 22, 1833 
Dear General: — 

I had the pleasure of receiving, by Mr. Clay, your kind letter of the 2 1st 
March. And here allow me to tender you my grateful thanks for the per- 
mission which you have granted me to return home. Indeed, I, for some 
time, had scarcely indulged the hope that I should be allowed to leave St. 
Petersburg before the next spring; this permission, therefore, was a most 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 187 

agreeable surprise, and adds another to the many obhgations I owe to your 
kindness. I hope I may yet have an opportunity of displaying my gratitude 
by my actions. 

Although I shall leave St. Petersburg with pleasure, yet I shall alwa3'S 
gratefully remember the kindness with which I have been treated here. My 
great objection to the country is the extreme jealousy and suspicion of the 
government. A public minister, in order successfully to discharge his duties 
and avoid giving offense, must conceal the most ennobling sentiments of his 
soul. We are continually surrounded by spies, both of high and low degree in 
life. You can scarcely hire a servant who is not a secret agent of the police. 

There is one mitigating circumstance in Russian despotism. In other por- 
tions of Europe we behold nations prepared and anxious for the enjoyment of 
liberty, yet compelled to groan beneath the yoke. No such spectacle is pre- 
sented in this country. The most ardent Republican, after having resided 
here for one year, would be clearly convinced that the mass of this people, 
composed as it is of ignorant and superstitious barbarians, who are also slaves, 
is not fit for political freedom. Besides, they are perfectly contented. The 
emperor seems to me to be the very beau ideal of a sovereign for Russia, and 
in my opinion, notwithstanding his conduct towards Poland, he is an abler 
and a better man than any of those by whom he is surrounded. L flatter 
myself that a favorable change has been effected in his feelings towards the 
United States since my arrival. Indeed, at the first I was treated with great 
neglect, as Mr. Clay had always been. I was glad he returned. It would be 
difficult to find a more agreeable Secretary of Legation. I also entertain a 
very high opinion of Mr. Vail. 

I sincerely rejoice that our domestic differences seem almost to have ended. 
Independently of their fatal influence at home, they had greatly injured the 
character of the country abroad. The advocates of despotism throughout 
Europe beheld our dissensions with delight ; whilst the friends of freedom 
sickened at the spectacle. God grant that the restless spirits which have 
kindled the flame in South Carolina may neither be Avilling nor able to pro- 
mote disunion by rendering the Southern States generally disaffected towards 
the best of governments. 

Whilst these dissensions are ever to be deplored in themselves, they have 
been most propitious for your fame. We generally find but few extracts from 
American papers in the European journals ; but whilst the South Carolina 
question was pending, your proclamation, as well as every material fact neces- 
sary to elucidate its history, was published on this side of the Atlantic. I 
have a hundred times heard, with pride and pleasure, the warmest commenda- 
tions of your conduct, and have not met with a single dissenting voice. I 
was the other day obliged to laugh heartily at the sentiment of a Russian 
nobleman, which he considered the highest commendation. He said it was a 
pity that such a man as you had not been king of England instead of William 
the Fourth, for then Ireland would have been kept in good order and 
O'Connell would long since have been punished as he deserved. 



188 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I might have told him you were not the stuff of which kings are made, 
and if you had possessed the power Ireland would have had her grievances 
removed and received justice, and that then there might have been no occa- 
sion for severity 

James Buchanan. 

[from s. pleasonton.] 

Washington, April 2d, 1833. 
Dear Sir : — 

I take the opportunity afforded by the return of Mr. Clay to St. Petersburg 
to write to you, in the certainty that the letter will be safely delivered. 

The compromising tariff act passed at the last session has been accepted 
pretty generally at the South, and has been received at the North much 
better than I expected, so that the alarm and anxiety which existed on the 
subject liave been removed. 

Much clamor, however, is yet kept up at the South, including Virginia, on 
the subject of the President's 10th December proclamation, and what is 
called the enforcing bill. The proclamation in my opinion contains the true 
Union doctrine, and does General Jackson great honor; and the enforcing bill 
was absolutely called for by the attitude which South Carolina had assumed. 
The State rights gentlemen, however, in the South, are for denying all right 
to the Union, as if the two governments Avere not formed by the same people 
and for their benefit. Absurd as these State rights doctrines are when carried 
fully out, I fear they will be pushed to an open rebellion by the Southern 
States before many years shall elapse. 

I was in hopes that when Mr. Livingston went to France, as he will do 
probably in June next, that you would have been called to the Department 
of State, but it seems a different arrangement is to be made. Mr. McLane is 
to go to the Department of State, and it is said a gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania, who has never been spoken of for the Treasury, is to be appointed to 
that department. As Dallas and Wilkins have been much talked of for this 
department, I am somewhat in hopes that the person referred to may be 
yourself. Be that as it may, I feel pretty confident that you will be elected 
to the Senate of the United States at the next meeting of the legislature, if 
you should be at home in season. They have made two or three trials to elect 
a senator during the session without effect, and from all I can learn the 
legislature will adjourn without making an election, so that the election will 
lie over until the next session. 

Mrs. Pleasonton is now pretty well, though she has had several severe 
attacks in the course of the winter. Mathilda, with her husband, left us yes- 
terday morning for Philadelphia. She had been ill for nearly two months, 
and was not able to leave us until yesterday. Augustus is exceedingly 
studious and is getting a good share of professional business. I have great 
hopes of him. Laura is still m Philadelphia, but will complete her education 



COREESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 189 

in the month of IMay. Mrs. P. intended to have written to you but she has 
not had it in her power, having been much engaged for Mathilda. I send 
you by Mr. Clay, copies, or rather duplicates, of two letters written to you 
some time ago about your accounts. 

Mr. Clay can inform you of many particulars which will interest you, but I 
presume will say nothing of his friend [John] Randolph, who is now decidedly 
and zealously in the opposition. He was here lately and behaved in the most 
eccentric manner. 

As you may not have seen all the documents communicated to Congress by 
the President in relation to South Carolina, I have determined to burthen Mr. 
Clay with them. They are accordingly enclosed. 

With great regard, I remain, dear sir, your friend and obedient servant, 

S. Pleasonton. 



[mR. BUCHANAN TO JOHN B. STERIGEUF..] 

St. Petersburg, May 19, 1833. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I think you are mistaken in supposing I should have been elected to the 
Senate had I been at home. The opposition against me from many causes 
would have been too strong. Indeed, I have an impression that my public 
career is drawing near its close, and I can assure you this feeling does not cost 
me a single pang. All I feel concerned about is to know what I shall employ 
myself about after my return. To recommence the practice of the law in 
Lancaster Avould not be very agreeable. If my attachments for that place as 
well as my native State were not so strong, I should have no difficulty in 
arriving at a conclusion. I would at once go either to New York or Balti- 
more ; and even if I should ever desire to rise to political distinction, I believe 
I could do it sooner in the latter place than in any part of Pennsylvania. 
What do you think of this project ? Say nothing about it. I have not written 
a word on the subject to any other person. I see the appointment of Judge 
Sutherland announced some weeks ago. Judging from the feelings displayed 
in the election of printers to Congress, I should not have been astonished 
at his election as Speaker by the next House of Representatives. 

The winter here has been very long, but I have not at all suflfered from 
the cold. The great thickness of the walls of the houses, their double 
windows and doors, and their stoves built of tile, render their houses much 
more comfortable in very cold weather than our own. They are always 
heated according to a thermometer, and preserved at an equal temperature. 
Indeed, I have suffered more from the heat than the cold during the winter. 
But its length has been intolerable. The Neva was frozen for nearly six 
months. It broke up on the 25th ultimo ; but still, until within a few days, 
there is a little ice occasionally running which comes from the Lake Ladoga. 

On the 9th instant the navigation opened at Cronstadt. Four noble 
American ships led the way, and with a fine breeze and under full sail they 



190 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

passed through the ice and made an opening for the vessels of other nations. 
The character of our masters of vessels and supercargoes stands much higher 
here than that of the same class belonging to any other nation. They have 
much more intelligence. This Court requires a man of peculiar talent. There 
are but few of our countrymen fit to be sent here as minister. Here the 
character of the country depends much upon that of the minister. The 
sources of information respecting our republican institutions which are open 
throughout the rest of Europe are closed in this country. A favorable im- 
pression must be made upon the nobility by personal intercourse, and in 
order that this may be done it is absolutely necessary that the minister should 
occasionally entertain them and mix freely in their society. Such is the 
difference between Russian and American society, I am satisfied that Levett 
Harris would be a more useful minister here than Daniel Webster. I make 
this remark on the presumption that for years to come we shall have no 
serious business to transact. 

After looking about me here, I was much at a loss to know what course to 
pursue. Without ruin to my private fortune I could not entertain as others 
did. Not to entertain at all I might almost as well not have been here 
except for the treaty. After some time I determined that I would give them 
good dinners in a plain republican style, for their splendid entertainments, and 
the plan has succeeded. I have never even put livery on a domestic in my 
house ; — a remarkable circumstance in this countiy. 

I think I may say, I am a favorite here, and especially with the emperor 
and empress. They have always treated me during the past winter in such a 
manner as even to excite observation. I am really astonished at my own 
success in this respect, for in sober truth, I say that, in my own opinion, I 
possess but few of the requisites of being successful in St. Petersburg society. 
I trust and hope that I may be permitted to return to my beloved native land 
this fall ; and if Providence should continue to bless my endeavors, I think 
the character of the United States will stand upon a fairer footing with his 
Imperial Majesty than it has ever done since his accession to the throne. 

May 22d. 

Mr. Eandolph Clay returned here on the 19th, bringing me a great number 
of letters from my friends and the President's permission to return homo 
this full. G-od willing ! I shall be with you about the end of November. 
These letters hold out flattering prospects of my election to the Senate at the 
next session. 

I confess I consider this event very doubtful, and shall take care not to set 
my heart upon it. 

Mr. Barry leaves me to-day for London, and I have no time to add any- 
thing more. Please to write soon, and believe me ever to be your sincere 
friend, James Buchanai^. 

P. S. — Remember me to Paulding, Patterson, Kittera and my other friends. 
I wrote once to the latter, but have never received an answer from him. 



JACKSON AND WEBSTER. 191 

[from LOUIS McLANE.] 

(Unofficial.) Washington, June 20, 1832. 

My Dear Sir :- 

It aifords me sincere pleasure to devote a portion of my early labors in 
this Department* to you, whom I have known so long, and esteemed so 
highly. In one form or other you will hereafter receive more frequent com- 
munications from me, for I have already made a regulation by which a semi- 
monthly communication will be kept up from the Department with our 
principal ministers abroad. This is not only due to their character, but 
necessary to keep them informed of our principal domestic and foreign 
relations. This regulation will be independent of such special communications 
as the particular state of the missions respectively may [render] necessary. 

You have no friend in this country who participated more sincerely than I 
in the success of your negotiation, and if the President needed anything to 
strengthen his friendship for you, or his confidence in your zeal and ability, 
your labors on that occasion would have afforded it. He has probal^ly told 
you so himself, as I understood from him that he intended to write you. 

Tlie President is on a tour through the northern and eastern 

cities. He will go to Portland and thence up the lakes, through New York 
to Ohio and Pennsylvania, and expects to return here about the middle of 
July. I accompanied him as far as New York, and thence returned to my 
post. His health and spirits, notwithstanding the great fatigue to which he 
was perpetually exposed, had considerably improved, and I now have great 
hopes that he will derive advantage from his journey. His journey to New 
York was quite a triumphal procession, and his reception everywhere 
indescribably gratifying and imposing. The enthusiasm and cordial out- 
pouring of the kindest feelings of the heart, with which he was everywhere 
greeted, could not be exceeded, and the committees from the East, who met 
him in New York, assured us that a similar reception awaited his further 
progress. In Boston, both parties were emulating each other's exertions, and 
Webster, it was understood, had cut short his tour in the West, in order to 
receive him. 

This would be a sharp alliance, and yet it is altogether probable. On the 
part of Webster's friends, it is ardently desired and incessantly urged ; on his 
own part he affects to consider the President's hostility to the bank as the 
only barrier. But I consider this only the last qualm of a frail lady, who 
notwithstanding, finally falls into the arms of the seducer. In the Senate, 
Webster's accession may be important, in the country its effect will be at 
least doubtful ; especially with the democracy of New England. If, however, 
the President can identify the power of his name and character and hold 
upon the affections of the people with any individual, all opposition, however 

* Louis McLane, of Delaware, became Secretary of State iu May, 1833. He was suc- 
ceeded by Joliu Forsyth, of Georgia, iu June, 1834. 



192 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

combined, must be hopeless. It is evident to me tliat no man ever lived, 
who exerted the same influence over the great body of the people as General 
Jackson; and if he devote the remainder of his term to tranquilize the public 
mind, he will go into retirement with greater fame than any other man in our 
history. The bank is the only disturbing question, and that he might over- 
throw, after all its iniquities, without a jar, unless by premature changing the 
[deposits], he should seriously derange tlie business and currency of the 
country. He is strongly disposed to take that step, both from his own 
hostility to the institution, and from the importunate [advice] of many of his 
friends. It would, in my opinion, be injudicious and prejudicial to the com- 
munity ; but the probability is it will be done either before or immediately 
after the commencement of the next session of Congress, 

The affairs in the South arc once more tranquil, and nullification may be 
said to be extinct. There are men in that quarter, however, who seriously 
meditate further difiiculties, and there is just reason to apprehend that these 
will not be satisfied short of a Southern convention, leading to a Southern 
confederacy. 

The elements of popular excitement only are wanting to make their 
purpose discernible to all, and the grave question has been revived for this 
purpose. So far it has not been successful, though it is evidently making 
some impression in one or two of the States south of the Potomac, and you 
know better than I can tell you, that the spirit of revolution is progressive, 
though it may be slow. 

On all other points, our affairs at home are prosperous, and the prospect 
gratifying; and the new hues of party will not be very distinctly defined 
until toward the close of the next session of Congress. 

I saw, while in Philadelphia with the President, many of your friends, 
who affectionately inquired after you, and you may be satisfied that your 
absence from the country has not served to weaken their attachment. 

Now, my dear sir, I have taken up already too much of your time with 
this uninteresting letter, and I will therefore relieve you from a greater part 
of it. I will only add the Avish of Mrs. McL to be brought to your re- 
membrance, and the assurance of the continued respect and regard with 
which I am unaffectedly your friend and servant, 

Louis McLane. 

The principal object of the mission being accomplished, Mr. 
Buchanan began his journey to Moscow early in June, and was 
absent from St. Petersburg about a month. In making selec- 
tions from his journals and letters relating to this tour, as well 
as those which he kept on his travels homeward after he linally 
left Russia, I shall omit descriptions of places and countries 
that are now familiar to multitudes of Americans, and shall 
quote only those which are of interest because they give 



JOURNEY TO MOSCOW. I93 

accounts of persons or things as they impressed him at the 
time, and which are out of the beaten path of guide books as 
they then were or have since become, or which relate to the 
public affairs of that period. 

Tuesday at 8 P. M., June 4, 1833. 

Left St. Petersburg and arrived at Novogorod about 12 midi on Wednes- 
day. Visited the church of St. Sophia, said to be founded by Wladimir in 
1040. His tomb, at which they say miracles are wrought, is in it. The 
paintings are numerous and barbarous. The interior has a rude magnificence. 
Went into the sanctum sanctorum, where women are never admitted. There 
they consecrate the Eucharist in the Greek Church, out of the view of the 
people ; unlike the Latin in this respect. The priest afterwards carries it out 
on his head, to be adored by the people. 

The sides of the western door are lined with bronze, from which jutted 
out in bronze a number of strange and barbarous figures not unlike those of 
Mexico. They must have been Christian and even Eussian in their origin, as 
one of them represented an Archimandrite in full dress. The inscriptions 
were Sclavonian. Our guide said they were conquered from the Swedes by 
St. Wladimir. The church is west of the river. It and several other 
buildings are surrounded by a brick wall, with turrets, etc., etc, about twenty- 
five feet high and eighteen thick and nearly a mile in circumference, a ditch 
beneath. 

There are also the remains of another rampart and ditch, a considerable 
distance from the former. The church of St. Sophia is surrounded by a dome 
and four cupolas of the character peculiar to Russia. 

The former is gilt and the others plated with silver, so they say. The cele- 
brated monastery of St. Anthony we did not visit. There is scarcely any 
appearance of ancient ruins to indicate the former greatness of Novogorod. 
This arises from the nature of the materials of which it was built. 

On Wednesday night we stayed at Zaitsova, an excellent inn. 

The public houses are generally bad, beyond what an American can have 
any idea of; nevertheless, a few on this road were good. This inn is main- 
tained in a degree by the emperor. 

The peasants are jolly, good-natured fellows, who drive furiously and 
seem happy. They are all rogues, nevertheless. In appearance and conduct 
they are very unlike those of Petersburg. 

Saturday, June 8. 

We arrived in Moscow at 10 o'clock A. M. The road is the best over 
which I have ever travelled. It is macadamized in the most perfect manner, 
and the traveller pays no toll. About 175 versts, or five posts, are yet unfin- 
ished between Chotilova and Tiver. This fraction is the old road and partly 
composed of sand, partly of the trunks of trees laid across, and partly of 
large stones, and in some places it is very bad. The posting is eight cents 
L— 13 



194 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANA^^, 

per verst for four horses and ten cents for the post adjoining St. Petersburg 
and Moscow. 

The horses, though mean in their appearance, travel with great speed. 
They uniformly place the four abreast when travelling by post in Russia. The 
post-boys always cross themselves devoutly before ascending their seats; 
though they, in common with all the other Russian mousiques whom I have 
ever met, will cheat you if they can. 

At every post station we found a number of these — with their lonf 
beards and their tanned sheepskins — ready to grease the carriage or perform 
any other menial service. At night they lie down on the road and around 
the post-houses, and sleep on the ground. Indeed Russians of the highest 
class appear to know little of the comforts of a good bed. 

The country presents a forlorn aspect for 150 versts from St. Petersburg. 
It is both poor and flat, and the villages have a wretched appearance. They 
all consist of log huts with their gables towards the street. As you approach 
Waldi, the country becomes somewhat better and more undulating, and more 
attention seems to have been paid to its cultivation. It afterwards resumes 
its level appearance as you advance to Moscow, but still it is much better in 
every respect than near St. Petersburg. With a single exception we did not 
observe a nobleman's seat along the whole route, and this one had a mean 
appearance. Nothing affords variety to the dull and monotonous scenery 
except the churches, which present the only interesting objects in the land- 
scape. 

Tiver is the principal town of the government of that name. It was finally 
conquered in 1483. The city is handsome and has the appearance of pros- 
perity. It is situated on both sides of the Volga. When I approached this 
river, I could not resist the feeling of how strange it was that I should be on 
its banks. 

Sunday afternoon, 9ih. 

We went to the promenade, at three versts from the city, on the Petersburg 
road. 

Monday morning, 10th. 

We visited Madame S and had some conversation with her which 

would have been agreeable but for the constant interruption of a parrot 
which screeched as if it had been hired for the occasion. She had accom- 
panied Mr. Wells of Philadelphia last year to the monastery of the Trinity. 
Her son is to go with us to the Kremlin to-morrow. 

The appearance of Moscow must have greatly improved since its confla- 
gration in 1812. It has lost, however, in a great degree, that romantic and 
Asiatic appearance which it formerly presented. The cumbrous and rude 
magnificence of palaces irregularly scattered among Tartar huts, has given 
place to airy and regular streets in all directions. It appears to be in a pros- 
perous condition. That which chiefly distinguishes it from other cities is the 
immense number of churches. Their cupolas, of all colors and of all forms, 
rising above the summits of the houses and glittering in the sun, are very 



JOURNEY TO MOSCOW. I95 

striking and imposing objects. In this respect no city in the world, except 
Constantinople, can be compared with it. In the evening we visited the 
Russian Theatre. Both the infernal regions and the Elysian fields were well 
represented on the stage. 

Tuesday. 
It rained all day. Dined with Madame NovaselsofF. She is one of the 

three daughters of Orloff, the youngest brother of the three who left 

no son — immensely rich — had one son, an only child, who was killed in a 
duel some nine years ago. Aide-de-camp of Emperor — IschermofF was his 
antagonist. Both fell. His mother lives upon his memory. She says she is 
now building two churches, one on the spot where he expired and the other 
on her estate — a monument. She has established schools, one on the Lan- 
casterian plan, among her peasants. I told her she ought to live for her peasants 
and consider them her children. Her example also might produce great 
effect. She said she had no object to live for, and when it was the will of 
God, she would go cheerfully ; that her affections were fixed on another 
world. She had a full length likeness of her son in her parlor, and different 
otlier portraits of him scattered about ; his drawings, etc., etc. 

Wednesday morning. 

"We visited the Foundling Hospital, or the Imperial House of Education, as it 
is called. "We had a letter for Dr. Alfonskoi, the chief medical officer at- 
tached to the institution, and he, together with Baron Stackelberg, the super- 
intendent, conducted us through the apartments. This hospital is the glory 
of Moscow and is the most extensive establishment of the kind in the 
world. It is perfectly well conducted in all its departments. 

The object of the institution is twofold. The first is limited to the preser- 
vation of the lives of the foundlings and rearing them as peasants of the 
crown, and the second extends to their education and their freedom. The 
number of infants of the first description amounted to 6500 the last year. 
Each of these requires a separate nurse, and from the peculiar state of society 
in Russia, these are provided without the least difficulty. The peasant women 
throughout the province of Moscow (and others are excluded) come daily in 
considerable numbers to offer their services as nurses. Each one receives a 
foundling and after remaining with it a few weeks in the hospital, she and the 
child are sent to the village to which she belongs. For the maintenance of 
this child, until it attains the age of twelve years, she receives five roubles per 
month, or sixty per annum. Three thousand foundlings had been received 
during the present year. The boys and girls thus raised are sent upon 
the lands of the crown and become peasants. The former are not ex- 
empted from serving in the army. 

It was quite a novel spectacle for me to pass through the long ranges of 
women, with infants in their arms, or in the cradle. Everything was clean 
and in good order ; though the women were anything but good-looking. 

I believe most of the children received are legitimate, of poor parents. It 



196 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

is called the Imperial House of Education, not a foundling hospital, and the 
former name is more applicable to it than the latter. 

They borrow at 4 and lend at 5 ; not 5 and 6, as the Guide says. 

Baron Stackelberg told Mr. G. that the institution had 7,000,000 roubles 
clear after all expenses at the end of each year — sed quere. 

The second class are very different from the first. They consist of those 
foundlings for whom 150 roubles are advanced at the time they enter the es- 
tablishment. But as the institution can accommodate a greater number than 
are sent to it upon these terms, the deficiency is supplied by selections made 
sometimes from children of the first class, but most generally from those of 
poor parents of Moscow. These all continue in the institution until they 
receive their education. They are free when they depart from it and are not 
liable to be drafi;ed as soldiers. A sufficiently accurate account of these is to 
be found in the Guide. There are at present 550 boys and as many girls of 
this description. 

We dined with Dr. Alfonskoi. His wife is a communicative, agreeable 
woman who expresses her opinion freely upon all subjects. Whilst at table I 
received the inipression from her conversation that she took me for an Eng- 
lishman, notwithstanding I liad been introduced to her as the American min- 
ister. I did not consider this remarkable, from the ignorance which prevails 
throughout this country concerning the United States. On the evening of 
this day I had a still more decided example. Mr. G. and myself went to pay 
a visit to " The Prince Ouroussoff, master of the court of his I. M., and 
senator," Whilst I was conversing with the daughter, the princess asked 
Mr. G. if the United States still belonged to England. He replied that they 
were independent and constituted a separate government. She said this 
must have been since 1813, and when he informed her that their indepen- 
dence had been recognized by England since 1783, she was much astonished. 
Among other things she wished to know whether they spoke the English 
language in America. 

We visited the Souchareva Bashnia, This is a lofty and extensive building 
on an. elevated position, in the second story of which is the reservoir to sup- 
ply the city with water. This is brought eighteen versts. The top of the 
edifice affords a fine view of the city. 

All the buildings of this establishment escaped the conflagration of 1812. 
They contain at present a population of more than 5,000, and have a distinct 
pohce. 

Tliursday Morning. 

Before breakfast I visited the mineral-water establishment. It is situated 
near the Moscow, about four versts above the Kremlin. There you find 
waters of twenty- four different kinds prepared in imitation of those which are 
most celebrated throughout Europe. I took a glass of Carlsbad, the taste of 
which reminded me of that of Saratoga. Indeed the whole scene resembled 
that exhibited there. There were a great number of ladies and gentlemen 



SIGHT SEEING IN MOSCOW. 19 7 

■walking in the promenades, drinking and talking; but the ladies of Saratoga 
■were not there. The water is drawn by cocks from different vessels prepared 
for containing it, and placed contiguous to each other in a row. 

This establishment has been recently made by a joint stock company. The 
emperor has subscribed a number of shares. In St. Petersburg they are about 
to get up a similar establishment. There were to be six hundred shares at 
five hundred roubles each ; but three times that amount was subscribed at 
once. Dr. Myer, whom I met there to-day, is now here as agent from St. 
Petersburg to gain information, and observe the operation of the establishment 
at Moscow. 

We ascended the belfry of Ivan Yelikoi (Jean le Grand). It receives its 
name from the Church of St. John, which it surmounts. From there we had 
another fine view of the city. There are thirty-one bells in the belfry. All 
in the Kremlin are collected in it. — Vide the Guide. 

From thence we proceeded to the treasury of the Kremlin and examined 
its contents. It is fully described in the Guide, with the exception of some 
things which have been added since its publication. 

These are chiefly the. trophies of the conquest of poor unhappy Poland. 
They are the two thrones — the sceptre, the globe, and the sword of the 
emperor of Russia as king of Poland, which have been brought from 
Warsaw. 

The portraits of all the kings of Poland are now hung up in their order in 
this Russian arsenal -where the treasure is kept. We saw there also the flags 
which had been presented to the Polish army by the Emperor Alexander, 
and also the original constitution of Poland on the floor at his feet. It was 
placed there by the express command of his present majesty. 

The glorious standard of Poland which waved triumphantly over many a 
well fought field, but which the most exalted courage and self-devotion 
could no longer maintain against brutal and barbarian force, is there ex- 
hibited. The white eagle has been obhged to cower beneath the double- 
headed monster of Russia. May it again soar ! though to all human appear- 
ance it has sunk forever. 

The head of John Sobieski is one of the most noble and commanding I 
have ever beheld. The famous standard which he took from the Turks at 
Vienna when Poland saved Europe from the sway of the Infidel, is now in 
the same hall with the portrait of the hero and the king who commanded 
her army on that celebrated day. We afterwards visited the ancient and the 
modern palaces. The contrast between the two exhibits the change be- 
tween ancient and modern times in striking colors. In one of the rooms of 
the latter, among other ancient portraits, we saw one of the Princess Sophia. 
She was an extraordinary woman, and must have had a very fine face. I 
have an interest in this woman, and am willing to disbelieve the crime which 
Peter the Great attributed to her, of an intention to assassinate him. How 
must her proud and ambitious spirit have been chafed by being confined to 
a monastery after having reigned with so much distinction. Accompanied 



198 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

by Mr. Thai, we rode out of the Barrier de Drogomirov, two or three versts 
on the road to Smolensko, to the summit of the last of three hills which rise 
gradually above each other, from whence we had a fine view of the city. It 
was from this quarter that the French entered. Bonaparte slept the first 
night at Petrovski, a place near the St. Petersburg road, about three versts 
from the city. 

Friday Alorning, June 2-\^ih. 

I went with Mr. Gretsch, the editor of the Bee at St. Petersburg, to see 
the famous monastery of Novo Devitcher where we saw the tomb of the 
Princess Sophia, who took the veil under the name of Suzanna, and was 
buried in 1704. For the rest, see the Guide, 183, 184. Mr. G. and myself 
visited and went through the mosque. In this country, all churches must be 
open. Unfortunately we arrived a little too late for the service. 

John the Third, in 1473, married the Princess Sophia, the daughter of 
Thomas Paleologus Porphyrogenetus, who was the brother of Constantine 
Paleologus, who died in 1453, whilst seeing his capital fall under the domin- 
ion of the Turks. By his unison with the last descendant of the Paleologus, 
John the Third considered himself as the heir of their crown, and after his 
marriage he substituted the eagle with two heads for the cavalier which was 
then the arms of the grand principality, and it was then that he took the title 
of Tsar. 

Saturday. 

This Mr, Gretsch is the editor of the Northern Bee of St. Petersburg, the 
principal Russian journal. He is also on a visit here for the first time. He 
came up to me the other day at the Treasury and introduced himself, since 
when he has been uncommonly kind. He appears to be, for I know not 
what he is, a frank, open-hearted, talkative, well-informed person, but some- 
thing of a bore. He laughingly styled the sultan this morning "our Governor 
General of Turkey." I am persuaded this is now the feeling in Russia. They 
believe themselves to be already the virtual masters of Constantinople. 

Mr. G. and myself afterwards went to the Mountain of Sparrows. It is 
on the southwest of the city opposite or nearly so the monastery of Novo 
Devitcher. From thence you have the best view of Moscow, and it is truly 
a beautiful and magnificent spectacle. It was here that they commenced the 
foundation of the cathedral of St. Sauveur, in consequence of a vow of the 
Emperor Alexander during the French war ; but it has been discontinued, 
and will be erected in another part of the city. The place was found to be 
too extensive and too expensive, though the vow was to build the greatest 
and most magnificent church in Russia. 

We next visited the garden of Nieschouchin, from whence also we had 
another fine view of the city. We there saw a theatre suh Jove. 

The opinion of Dr. Alfonskoi on the cholera is that it arises in all cases 
from a defect of heat in the system, and his universal remedy, after he came 
to understand the disease, was the hot, very hot bath. He is fully con- 



VISITING THE ALEXANDER INSTITUTION. 199 

vinced it was not contagious. It seized on those whose digestive powers had 
been enfeebled by drunkenness or high living. I told him of Dr. Stevens' 
saline treatment, and he said, from the development of heat, [which] the salt 
produced in the system, it might have been a good remedy. The cholera, 
Dr. A. thinks, came from the earth, is connected with gravity. The grip is its 
opposite and is connected with electricity. This last the best evidence that 
the cholera has finally disappeared. The stomach the root, as of a tree, etc. 

Sunday, IGih June. 

I went to the English chapel, and heard an excellent, animated, evangelical 
discourse, from the Rev. Matthew Camidge, the pastor. His text was 2 Peter 

3d chapter, from to . It was on the subject of the long sufFer- 

ino- of God with sinners, and the repentance to which this should naturally 
lead, etc., etc. The judgment-day will come by surprise as many temporal 
judgments do after long suffering. 

There is to be a theatrical entertainment this evening in the open air, at 
the garden of Nieschouchin, and afterwards a party at Madame Paschkoflf's. 
My old Presbyterian notions will prevent me from attending either. After 
church I paid some visits to the Skariatines, etc. 

The English chapel was consumed in the conflagration of 1812, and has 
been rebuilt but a few years since. It contains no organ. They sing well. 
The pastor receives about £200, the half of which comes from England. I 
was struck with the solemnity of this little congregation in a strange land. 
May God be with them 1 It was the most impressive sermon I have heard 
since I left America. 

Monday, 5-17 th June. 

"We visited, in company with Mr. Gretsch, and particularly examined the 
interior of the cathedrals of the Annunciation, of the Assumption, and of St. 
Michael the Archangel. They are sufiiciently described in the Guide. We 
also visited the ancient palace of the Patriarchs, and saw everything that was 
contained therein. The apartments of his holiness were very small and 
simple, though the state rooms must have been considered magnificent in 
Russia a century and a half ago. We there saw the apparatus for making 
the holy oil, which is distributed throughout Russia. It is only prepared once 
in three years. How wise it was in Peter the Great to abolish the Pa- 
triarchate ! Few men would have had the courage to make the attempt. 
From the ignorance of the Russians and their proneness to superstition, he 
must have continued to be as he formerly was, the rival of the czars 
themselves. 

From thence we went to the Alexander Institution, so called after his 
majesty. Whilst the cholera raged in Moscow, many of the children of poor 
noble families were deprived of their parents, and thus became destitute 
orphans. To relieve their wants and furnish them with an education, this 
institution was first established by the present emperor. Being pleased with 



200 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

its operation, he has made it permanent. The orphan children of poor nobles 
from any part of the empire are now received there, and all their expenses 
defrayed. The emperor purchased for the purposes of this institution the 
house and grounds of a nobleman. Count Kasoumoffsky, for which he gave 
1,200,000 roubles B. A. 

The extent of these private establishments of the Russian nobility may be 
judged of, from the circumstances that this house and the adjacent buildings 
appertaining to it now, accommodate 250 boys and as many girls, with all 
the necessary professors and domestics. 

Hece the former are taught the Russian, French, German and Latin lan- 
guages; geometry, geography, drawing, dancing, etc., etc., and the latter are 
instructed in all these branches, except Latin and geometry, and in the other 
accomplishments Avhich more particularly belong to females. There are three 
classes of each. 

We heard the first class of the young ladies examined in French and 
geography, and then specimens of their drawing, embroidery and other 
needle-work were exhibited to us. They acquitted themselves very credit- 
ably. They also played for us on the piano. As a compliment to myself, 
they were examined on the geography of the United States. What 
struck me with great force, was that the little girls in the second and third 
classes recited pieces from the French and German, as well as the Russian, 
with apparent facility, and so far as I could judge, Avith a perfect accent. 

They certainly have the most wonderful talent for acquiring languages of 
any people in the world. 

We afterwards went through the apartments of the boys and heard them 
examined. One of the boys was asked who was the greatest man that 
America had produced, and he promptly answered Washington. The thrill 
of delight which I experienced at the moment, I shall not undertake to 
describe. He hesitated in his answer to the second question, who was the 
next, as probably many Americans would ; and was then asked who was the 
celebrated ambassador of the United States at Paris, to which he replied 
Franklin. He first said Ptolemy Philadelphus, but corrected himself im- 
mediately. 

The most imposing spectacle I witnessed here was all the girls collected at 
dinner. They were all dressed alike, in green frocks and white aprons, which 
came over their arms. When we entered, they were all ranged at their 
difierent places and were standing up. Those who were distinguished, were 
placed at two small tables in the centre. Previous to taking their seats, they 
sang a hymn in Russian as a blessing. Their performance was excellent. 
Here the goodness and piety of the female heart shone out in a striking 
manner. The little girls exhibited the warmest and most lively devotion, and 
frequently crossed themselves with all that sincerity and ardor of manner 
which can never be counterfeited at their age. The dinner was very good. 
One circumstance is worthy of remark. Mr. Gretsch made a little address 
in Russian to one of the female classes, which Mr. Guerreiro understood. 



BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS OF MOSCOW. 201 

He informed them that I was the minister of the United States, a great and 
powerful republic. That the people there were well educated and well 
informed; but that every person had to labor. That their Grovernment was 
a good one ; but no paternal emperor existed there, who would become the 
father of orphans and educate them at his own expense. He concluded by 
impressing upon their minds how grateful they ought to be to the emperor, 
and how much a monarchical government ought, on this account, to be pre- 
ferred to a republic. 

The emperor is very fond of this institution, of which he is the founder. 
Indeed, in different forms and in different manners nearly all the children of 
the Eussian nobihty of both sexes are educated in imperial institutions, and in 
some degree at the expense of the government. We visited the garden 
where there was a considerable number of very httle boys and girls too 
young for any of the classes. It is the emperor's delight, they say, to o-q 
among them and play with them, to lie down upon tlie ground and let them 
cover him, and to toss them about in all directions. From all I have heard a 
great fondness for children is one of the traits of the emperor's character. 
He is quick and warm in his feelings, and at the moment of irritation would 
be severe ; but his passion soon subsides, and the empress receives great 
credit for correcting this fault in his temper. I am more and more convinced 
every day that he could have pursued no other course with safety towards 
the Poles than that which he did. The bitterness against them is extreme 
and there is scarcely a monument of antiquities in the Kremlin which does 
not relate to battles lost and won between the two nations. Their mutual 
enmity is truly hereditary. The emperor advances two hundred thousand 
roubles per annum to this institution, and has lately given it a million of roubles, 
which is to accumulate for the purpose of forming a capital for its support. 
The foundation of a new and extensive building has already been laid for the 
better accommodation of the pupils. 

The chamberlain, Tchenchine, is the principal director, and Mr. Davydoff 
the chief professor, with both of whom I was much pleased, as well as with 
Madame Tchenchine, the wife of the former. 

From thence, accompanied by Messrs. Tchenchine and Davydoff, we visited 
the Armenian institution, founded in 1806 by the Messieurs Lazareff, wealthy 
Armenian noblemen, for the benefit chiefly of native Armenians, wheresoever 
they may be scattered. The memoir presented to me by Mr. D. will suffi- 
ciently explam the object of it. There you saw in the form and in the face 
of the pupils the Asiatic traits. One of them, a native of Calcutta, spoke 
English to me. There are several private institutions for the education of 
youth at Moscow, founded by private munificence, and whether ostentation 
may have been the moving cause or not, still they are very valuable to the 
community. We partook here of an elegant dtjeuner-a-fourchette. There 
are now forty-five scholars gratis and twenty-five who pay fifty roubles per 
month, in the institution, so says Mr. Davydoff. 

We dined to-day with the governor-general. Prince Galitzine, and a 



202 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

select party. He is a dignified gentleman of the old school, with great sim- 
plicity of manners, and is revered by the people high and low of the city and 
province of Moscow. He speaks English tolerably well, and we had much 
conversation concerning the United States. He commanded the cavalry at 
the battle of Borodino, and represented it, as it has been always represented, 
as a most murderous battle on both sides. 

We spent the evening at Prince Ourousoflf's. I had almost forgot to 
mention that in our visits to the cathedrals and the patriarchal palace we were 
accompanied by Mr. Polevoy, the editor of the Moscow Telegraph, at Mos- 
cow, who is engaged in writing a history of Russia, and by another savant. 
Professor John SnequirefF. 

The former gave me several excmplaries of Russian antiquities as a 
souvenir. 

Tuesday Morning. 
Mr. Gretsch, Mr. Guerreiro and myself set out for the Trostza monastery, a 
place famous in Russian history. It is sixty-two versts north of Moscow. 
We left by the barrier of Trostza. We found the road covered with numerous 
parties of pilgrims on foot, going to pay their devotions at the shrine of St. 
Sierge, the founder. The women were, I think, nearly ten to one for the 
men. In ancient times the sovereigns of Russia used to go on foot from 
Moscow to worship at this shrine; the pious Catharine was, I believe, the 
last who performed this pilgrimage in this manner. 

The villages and churches along the road are nearly all celebrated in 
Russian history. At about seven versts from the principal convent there is 
a monastery for nuns dependent upon it. We found the church at this 
monastery crowded with pilgrims, crossing themselves; many were on their 
knees before the pictures, and the most devout touched the floor with their 
foreheads. There is nothing in the Greek liturgy which sanctions the worship 
of these pictures. Indeed, images are excluded. It was, however, impossible 
to resist the belief that these poor creatures considered them something more 
than mere pictures. 

AVhen we arrived at Trostza we found that the governor-general had sent 
an officer to show me all the antiquities and curiosities of the place ; and had 
not Mr. Guerreiro told them in my absence that he knew it would be dis- 
agreeable to me, I should have been received by a military guard. I thus 
avoided what to me would have been unpleasant. 

We were first presented to the Reverend Father Antoine, the archiman- 
drite or abbot of the monastery. In my Ufe I have never beheld a more 
heavenly expression of countenance. It spoke that he was at peace with 
heaven and with his fellow-men, and possessed a heart overflowing with 
Christian benevolence and charity. He spoke no French nor English, and 
my conversation with him was through Mr. Gretsch as interpreter. He is 
very intelligent and perfectly modest and unassuming in his manners. In his 
appearance he is not more than thirty-five. His long beard was of a most 
beautiful chestnut color, and made his appearance venerable notwithstanding 



CHURCHES OF MOSCOW. 203 

his comparative youth. I shall never forget the impression -which this man 
made upon me. 

He showed us all the antiquities himself; and first we made a circuit on 
the ancient wall. It is a mile round and at least twenty-two feet thick, and 
its great glory is that the Poles have never been able to pass it. This he 
communicated to us with evident satisfaction. It was in ancient times the 
strongest fortification in Russia, and was perfectly impregnable before the use 
of artillery. An imperial palace formerly existed within it, not a trace of 
which now remains. 

St. Sierge was a pious and patriotic hermit who, in the reign of Dimitri 
Danshoy, retired to this spot, which was then a wilderness. Some well 
authenticated fiacts exist which may well inspire a superstitious people with 
great veneration for this spot. Among others of a recent date, when the 
plague raged in Moscow during the days of the Empress Catharine, notwith- 
standing the gates of the monastery were always open to the crowds of 
pilgrims who then frequented the shrine, no case of plague occurred within 
the walls. The same may be observed in regard to the recent cholera. 

After the circuit of the walls, we passed through the different churches. 
That where the reliques of St. Sierge are deposited was much crowded. His 
shrine is very rich. The church was crowded with pilgrims. 

The interior of these churches resembles the others we had seen. The icon- 
ostase is the covering ascending from the floor to the summit, which conceals 
from public view the place where the sacrament is consecrated. Upon it are 
uniformly painted, in several rows, holy pictures of the Virgin and of the 
saints. In the ancient churches these are sufficiently rude and barbarous, 
but richly ornamented. 

In passing from one church to another we saw a square brick Avail cov- 
ered with boards, but without any inscription, which contains the remains of 
Boris GoudounofF and his family. The bodies of the father and the son were 
taken by the fury of the people from the cathedral of St. Michael, where they 
were deposited with those of the other czars, and were afterwards brought to 
Trostza. They were formerly within the walls of a church ; but, it needing 
repairs, in the time of the madman Paul, he ordered the walls which ex- 
tended over these remains to be taken down, and the limits of this church to 
be restricted so as to leave them without a covering. Whilst the good 
archimandrite was relating this circumstance, he was evidently much af- 
fected by the barbarity of the action. This was done because Paul believed 
Goudounoff to be a usurper. 

He has been charged with the crime of having caused the murder of the 
true Dimitri, the last branch of the family of Rurick. But this is a most ob- 
scure period of Russian history, and their great historian, Karamsin, leaves 
the question in doubt. In all other respects he was an excellent sovereign, 
and Peter the Great always spoke of him in terms of the highest respect 

We afterwards visited the sacristy and there saw a great many splendid 
sacred robes and vessels. All the sovereigns in succession of the house of 



204 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Romanoff have presented their gifts, with the exception of Peter the Great, 
and there are several prior to that period. The specimens of embroidery 
wrought by the Empresses Elizabeth, Anne and Catharine the Second are very 
rich and magnificent. Peter the Great deprived this monastery of all its dis- 
posable wealth for which he gave them receipts, and Catharine took their lands 
and their peasants from them. But Peter built a church there, at least so the 
archimandrite said, and pointed it out to us. 

The greatest curiosity in the sacristy is the miraculous crystal, or white 
stone, in the body of which is clearly defined and represented in black a 
monk in his black robes kneeling before a crucifix. It requires no efibrt of 
the imagination to present this spectacle to the eye. It is clearly and distinctly 
defined. I examined this stone with great care, and certainly but with little 
faith, and yet I am under the impression that the likeness of the monk and the 
crucifix are contained in the very body of the crystal itself, and are not arti- 
ficial Nature, amid the infinite variety of her productions, 

has given birth to this curious piece of workmanship. The Father Antoine, 
in a solemn and impressive manner, presented each of us with a consecrated 
picture of St. Sierge. 

The Father Antoine then accompanied us to that portion of the buildings 
destined for the students of divinity, of which there are 100 at Trostza, and 
the same number of monks. There we were presented to the archiman- 
drites ; Polycarpe, rector of the ecclesiastical academy, a fat and jolly-looking 
monk, who laced his tea strong with cherry brandy and took his wine kmdly ; 
to Peter, ancient archimandrite of the Russian mission at Peking, Avho has a 
long white beard and venerable appearance, and read Chinese aloud for our 
amusement; to Neophyte, formerly substitute of Peter at Peking; and to 
the monk Tsidore, librarian of the ecclesiastical academy. Their wine and 
their tea were both excellent, and we spent an hour or two very pleasantly 
with them. There is a room in these apartments, the ceiling of which con- 
tains paintings of the different exploits of Peter the Great ; a tribute of his 
daughter, the Empress Elizabeth. Upon taking leave, Polycarpe presented 
me several treatises in Russ as a keepsake. Upon taking leave of Antoine, I 
submitted to be kissed by him according to the Russian fashion, first on the 
right cheek, then on the left, and then on the mouth. This was my first reg- 
ular experiment of the kind. 

Wednesday. 

We dined at Mr. Cavenaugh's with a party of English. Among others I 

met Mr. Camidge there. His appearance, manners and conversation in 

private society did not answer the expectations I had formed of him from his 

preaching, 

Tliursday. 

On the 20th of June we left Moscow at eight in the evening, and arrived 

at St. Petersburg on Monday, the 24th, at 2 P. M., having slept two nights 

on the road. At Vouischnije Volotschok we saw the sluice connecting the 

Tivortza with the Atsta. It can only be used by vessels going towards St. 

Petersburg. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS AT HOME. 205 

The following letter to one of liis Pennsylvania friends was 
written immediately after his return to St. Petersburg. 

[.MR. BUCHANAN TO G. LEIPER, ESQ.] 

St. Petersburg, July 3, 1833. 
My Good Friend: — 

It was with no ordinary pleasure that I received a letter by Mr. Clay with 
your well-known superscription. You make a strong mark, and your writing 
would be known among a thousand. I now have the joyful anticipation of 
being ere long once more among you. A land reposing under the calm of 
despotism is not the country for me. An American of proper feelings who 
visits any portion of Europe, must thank his God that his lot has been cast 
in the United States. For my own part, I feel that I am a much greater 
Republican than ever. 

I hope with the blessing of Heaven to be able to leave St. Petersburg in 
perfect consistency with the interests of my country some time during the 
next month. I shall then spend a few weeks in seeing other parts of .Europe, 
and embark for home the last of October or beginning of November. 

I have recently returned from a short excursion to Moscow ; the city 
which rolled back the tide of victory upon Napoleon. St. Petersburg is a cos- 
mopolite city ; but at Moscow you see Russia. It is a most picturesque and 
beautiful city. Its numerous churches surmounted by cupolas of every form 
and of every color give it a romantic and an Asiatic appearance. Many of 
these are gilt, and when the rays of the sun are reflected from them, the eye 
is dazzled with the richness and splendor of the spectacle. From Moscow I 
made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Sierge, a distance of forty miles. Go- 
ing and returning I suppose we saw ten thousand pilgrims upon the way. 
They were chiefly of the fair sex, and nearly all on foot. This shrine is at 
the Monastery of the Trinity, a place famous in Russian history, having been 
at the same time a convent, a palace, and a fortification. Here the family 
of the czars have often taken refuge. In passing round on the top of the 
walls with the abbot (which is more than a mile in circumference), he told 
me in a tone of triumph and national antipathy that these walls had never 
been taken by the Poles; on taking leave he presented me with a consecrated 
picture of St. Sierge, and from him I submitted to the operation of being 
kissed, first on the right cheek, then on the left, and finally plump on the 
mouth. This is the general custom of the country ; but it was my first experi- 
ment of the kind. The pious Catharine, although she seized the peasants 
and the broad acres of this monastery, made a pilgrimage on foot from Mos- 
cow to the shrine of St. Sierge. But enough of this bagatelle. 

On Saturday last, the 29th ultimo, we had news from New York via 
London up till the 1st, a wonderfully short passage. We then heard of the 
death of Randolph, and of the appointment of Mr. Duane as Secretary of the 
Treasury. I have no doubt the latter will make a good officer, and lie shows 



206 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

great courage in undertaking the Treasury at the present moment. My best 
wishes attend hira. 

I think it more than probable that my political life is drawing to a close, 
and I confess I look upon the prospect without regret. Office is not neces- 
sary for my happiness. I can enjoy myself with the blessing of God, under 
my own vine and my own fig tree. Whoever embarks on the stormy ocean 
of politics must calculate to make a shipwreck of contentment and tranquility. 
I have served the old hero faithfully and zealously, and he has done more for 
me than I could have expected. But I hope ere long to talk over my travels 
and my ups and downs along with Edwards and yourself and a few other 
friends in the good old county of Delaware. By the bye, I have a crow 
to pick with Edwards. I wrote to him and he has never answered my letter. 

I am obliged to write at full gallop. Safe opportunities are so rare, and 
when they occur, so much of my time is taken up in writing despatches, 
that I have but little left for my private friends. 

Remember me kindly to Edwards and his charming wife, to Dick, the 
doctor, your brothers, Kane, Lescine, Judge Engle, and my other friends. 
Please to present my most respectful compliments to Mrs. Leiper, and believe 
me, in whatever land my lot may be cast, to be always your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



The following brief account of one of the national fetes is 
recorded soon after his return to St. Petersburg : 

The Fete at Peterhoff, Saturday, July 1-13, 1833. 

The English palace was provided for the reception of the Diplomatic Corps, 
where we lived with Count Daschkaw, the grand master of ceremonies. 
Count Matuscervie, and some masters of the court. Everything was pro- 
vided for us in handsome style, for which, according to custom, I paid the 
court servants two hundred roubles at my departure. 

In the morning we went to visit the gardens upon singular vehicles on 
four wheels and drawn by two splendid horses. I can describe it no better 
than by imagining a double sofa with a single back, on which ten of us could 
sit back to back comfortably, five on each side. The foot-board was within 
about a foot of the ground. 

The water-works are the chief object of attraction. The water is conveyed 
in a canal for the distance of about thirty versts to the palace of Peterhoff, 
which is situate at the summit and on the brink of the second bank of the 
Grulf of Finland. From it there is a steep descent of about thirty feet to the 
extensive plain on the southern shore of the Gulf, which is covered by the 
immense garden. It is this descent which has enabled them to present so 
many varieties of water-works. In the gardens above, on a level with the 
palace (the English garden), the water is tastefully distributed into several 
lakes, etc. 



RETURN TO ST. PETERSBURG. 207 

The water falls in several broad sheets over different steps immediately in 
front of the palace. One range of these is gilt, and in a clear day must pre- 
sent a splendid spectacle. They place candles under the shutes of the water 
and thus have an illumination under the water, which did not, however, pro- 
duce the effect I expected. 

There are many long walks in the gardens, I should say more than a verst 
in length, at the intersection of which are little lakes, and in the centre of 
them jet d'eaus. 

On the sides of these walks, and all around the little lakes, were frame- 
works to a considerable elevation, destined for the candles. 

We rode all through tliese different walks. In front of one of the lakes 
stands the little palace of Marly, built by Peter the Great. Everything is 
preserved there just as he left it ; and it was curious to observe the progress 
of luxury in comparmg his clothing and accommodations with those of the 
imperial family in the present day. There is a carp which has been in the 
lake for a century, with a collar round its neck. It, with others, comes to the 
edge of the water at the sound of a bell, every morning, to receive its break- 
fast. 

We went over to the ball about eight in the evening, where the emperor 
and empress and the rest of us polonaised, and all things were conducted as 
on the 1st January, only the crowd was not so great. After supper, about 
half-past eleven, the emperor, empress, Prince Albert of Prussia, and other 
members of the I. F., mounted one of these vehicles. They were followed 
in others by the members of the court of D. C, and thus we slowly prome- 
naded through all these walks, the sides of which were covered by immense 
crowds of spectators. The effect of the illumination was brilliant. The 
Grand Duke Michel was on horseback, and great precautions were evidently 
taken, on account of the Polish conspiracy. 

About half-past one we ended. The distance to Peterhofif 26 versts. Mr. 
Lander and Captain Ranlett, Americans, were there in the ball room, in dom- 
inos, etc., etc. 



I 



[to the HON. E. LIVINGSTON, SECRETARY OF STATE.] 

American Legation, 
St. Petersburg, July 3, 1833, N. S. 
Sir:— 

On the 28th ultimo I had an interview with Count Nesselrode on the sub- 
ject of the application which I made on the 5-17 May, in behalf of Messrs. 
Shaw & Co., of Boston. The question has not yet been decided. 

After the conversation upon this subject, the count informed me that 
Baron Krudener, in his last despatch, had acknowledged the receipt of the 
emperor's ratification of the treaty, and on the first instant I received a note 
from him communicating the intelligence that the ratifications had been ex- 



208 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

changed at Washington on the 11th of May. At this interview I had hoped 
he would say something concerning tlie proposed treaty on neutral rights, and 
gave the conversation such a turn as would naturally lead to the subject. 

I enquired when the emperor would leave St. Petersburg. He answered 
that his majesty would not set out upon his journey into the interior until 
after the coraraencement of August. I then replied that before his departure, 
I should solicit my audience of leave, as I intended to return to the United 
States during the approaching autumn. 

He expressed his regret at my determination and their satisfection with 
my conduct as a minister; but made no allusion whatever, either to the 
treaty or to ray note of the 18-30 of May. I felt that it would not be be- 
coming for me again to press this subject upon his attention, and thus we 
parted. 

Perhaps it might have been better under the circumstances not to have 
attempted a renewal of the negotiation at the present moment. 

This government has, for some time, been in possession of secret informa- 
tion which has given them much concern. 

The impression is that it was first communicated to the emperor by Louis 
Philippe. A number of Poles at Paris, driven to desperation by their sufferings, 
have solemnly sworn before God, and pledged themselves to each other, to 
assassinate the emperor, at any personal peril. 

The first intimation which the public had of the existence of the con- 
spiracy was the publication on the 8-20 June, in the St. Petersburg Journal, 
of an address presented to the emperor at Helsingfors, during his late visit to 
Finland ; the subject was again referred to in the succeeding number of the 
15-27 of the same month. I herewith transmit you both these numbers. 

From the desperation of the Poles, and their determined character, this in- 
formation has excited considerable alarm in St. Petersburg. The people here, 
whilst they admire and respect the emperor as the author of their security 
and prosperity, look with fearful apprehension to the future, in the event of 
his assassination. 

The heir apparent is yet a minor, and although he possesses a most amia- 
ble disposition, it is believed he is deficient both in talent and strength of 
character. The Grand Duke Michel, who would become regent, is as univer- 
sally disliked as the emperor is esteemed. Indeed, in such an event, many of 
the foreigners in St. Petersburg, knowing the deadly hostility felt against 
them by the lower orders of Russians, would entertain serious apprehensions 
for their lives and their property. Such is the miserable condition of des- 
potism; and such is the feeling here, at the very moment when this gov- 
ernment, more by its superior policy than its power, has acquired a com- 
manding influence throughout Europe. 

Still greater precautions now exist than did formerly, in regard to the ad- 
mission of strangers into the country. The emperor no longer appears in the 
streets like a private citizen. It is said that he is always surrounded by 
guards. But from what I have heard, he rather submits to these regulations 



DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 209 

of his ministers than approves of them himself He is a bold and fearless 
man, and manifests no apprehension whatever. If the Poles have determined 
to play the part of Seaevola, he at least -will not enact that of Porsenna. 

Three of the conspirators have been seized in Russia. After all I cannot 
feel that there is much danger. I send you the Journal of yesterday, con- 
taining our latest news from Constantinople. 

This despatch will be carried to London by Mr. Gibson, our consul. He 
has been ill for some time, and his disease is, I fear, now approaching its 
crisis. He is very feeble, has a bad cough, and throws up much blood. His 
physician informed him that his only hope was to leave St. Petersburg, and 
that immediately. Mr. Clay will perform his duties during his absence, and 
we are both happy to render all the services in our power to so worthy a 
man and so good an officer. 

After having written the foregoing, I had the pleasure of receiving your 
Despatch No. 11, dated on the 30th April. It has been long on the passage. 
By the Hamburg Reporter received on the 29th ultimo, we had New York 
dates, via London, up till the first of that month. 

On the 19tli of July, Mr. Biiclianan received the melancholy 
news that his mother had died in the previous May. 

[to rev. EDWARD T. BUCHANAN.] 

St. Petersburg, July 20, 1833. 
My Dear Brother : — 

I received your kind letters, of the 7th and 17th May, on yesterday after- 
noon; the latter communicating the melancholy intelligence of mother's 
death.* The news was a severe and unexpected blow. I had hoped, by 
the blessing of God, to see her once more on this side of eternity. Indeed, 
this desire was one of the chief reasons which made me so reluctant to spend 
another winter in Russia. 

* Mrs. Buchanan died on the 14th of May, 1833, at the house of her daughter, Mrs. Lane, 
in Greensburg, Penusylvania. The letters of Mrs. Buchanan, of which I have seen many 
more than I have quoted, although rather formal in expression, show a mind of much culti- 
vation, imbued with a fervent religious spirit, and of very decided and just opinions. Ici 
one of her letters to her son James, written in 1822, she says : " Harriet and myself, at the 
request of Mr. S., a clergyman, are engaged in reading Neale's History of the Puritans, in 
which I observe a development of Queen Elizabeth's character and management, not much 
to her honor; however, it appears evident, in opposition to her own intentions, she was 
made an instrument in the hands of Providence, of promoting the Reformation, which has 
certainly rendered an essential service to the world." If the good lady had read Mr. Hallam's 
very impartial account of Elizabeth's management of the two opposite parties among the 
English Protestants, she would not have had much reason for changing the opinion which 
she formed from reading Neale, although it would not have been correct to say that the 
Queen's course was in any just sense dishonorable to her. The truth probably is, that 
Elizabeth, in nearly everything that she did in regard to religion, was governed by motives 
of policy, and not by convictions or special inclinations. In many respects, she was not 
a Protestant, according to the Puritan standard, and in many others she was not a Catholic. 

I— u 



210 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAX 

But it has been the will of the Almighty to take her to Himself, and we 
must bow in humble reverence. I received at the same time a letter from 
Mr. Henry, which gave me the consolatory assurance that she had died the 
death of a Christian, and that her latter end was peace. 

It is my present intention to leave St. Petersburg on the 7th August, and 
I feel almost confident, with the blessing of Heaven, that I shall be able with 
propriety, to bring all the business of my mission to a close before that day. 

My present purpose is to go by the steamboat to Lubeck, and thence by 
Hamburg, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Brussels to Paris, where I shall prob- 
ably spend a fortnight. I shall then proceed to London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
Belfast and Dublin, from which city I intend to cross over to Liverpool, and 
sail for New York by the packet of the 2-ith October. It is my intention, 
if possible, to see Romilton and Derry. I hope to reach the United States in 
the beginning of December. 

I have recently returned from a very agreeable excursion to Moscow; but 
I must defer a description of this city, the ancient capital of the czars, until 
we meet again. Whilst there, I visited the celebrated monastery of Iwitza, 
at the distance of forty miles. In the estimation of the Russians, it is a very 
holy place. It was anciently a strong fortress, which contained a palace as 
well as a convent, and is much connected with the history of Russia. The 
sovereigns formerly made pilgrimages on foot from Moscow to the shrine of 
St. Sierge, at this monastery. The Empress Catharine the Second, was the 
last who performed this act of devotion. Going and returning there, I am 
confident we met at the least 10,000 pilgrims on foot. They appeared to be 
of a low order of people, and the great majority were females. 

I have but little time before the departure of the boat, and must close. 
Remember me affectionately to my sister, I don't know her Christian name, 
to the Doctor and Maria. I am glad to hear that the latter are so comfort- 
ably situated, and hope you may all Hve together in Christian peace and in 
prosperity. Remember me kindly to Judge and Mrs. Shippen, Mr. and Mrs. 
Barlow, and believe me to be ever your affectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 

P. S. — I wrote to our dear mother on the 3d instant. 

[to the secretary of state.] 

Legation of the United States, 

St. Petersburg, July 31, N. S. 1833. 
On Friday last, the 28th instant, I had an interview with Count Nessel- 
rode, for the purpose of making the necessary arrangements previous to my 
departure from this country. 

After the usual salutations, ho introduced the subject of the commercial 
treaty, which is one of his favorite topics. The opposition made to it in the 
imperial council, and the difficulties which he there encountered and overcame, 
seem to have inspired him with a feeling of paternity towards this treaty. 



LAST INTERVIEW WITH COUNT NESSELP.ODE. 211 

After some general conversation, relating chiefly to its favorable reception in 
the United States, I changed the subject, and remarked, that in our last inter- 
view I had entirely forgotten to mention that his explanation in regard to Baron 
Sacken's note was entirely satisfactory to the President. It might be proper 
to observe, however, that Mr. Livingston differed materially from the baron 
in relation to some of the facts attending this unpleasant transaction, and it 
had, at first, been my intention to bring these points of diflFerence specially 
under the notice of his excellency; but after reflection, I had determined 
that it was best upon the whole not to revive the subject. He immediately 
replied it was wholly unnecessary ; he wished the whole subject to be buried 
in oblivion and there remain as if it had never existed. He expressed his 
pleasure in the strongest terms that the President was satisfied with the 
explanation, and then laughingly observed that Baron Sacken and Mr. Liv- 
ingston were now both hors du combat : the one was no longer charge nor 
tlie other Secretary of State. 

1 felt the less inclined to enter into any detail upon this subject, as Mr. Living- 
ston admits that Baron Sacken did show him the ofiensive note at New York, 
and that he did not make any ohjections to its style, though he is convinced this 
took place after the note had been sent to Mr. Brent and not before, as the 
baron had informed Count Nesselrode. When I returned home, I discovered 
that the count, before our interview, must have had in his possession a copy 
of Mr. Livingston's Despatch No. 11, giving his own explanation of the 
whole transaction. During my absence, the post-office had sent me the dupli- 
cate of that despatch which, like all the communications I have ever received 
through the same channel, had been evidently opened. How it got there, I 
know not, because it had been forwarded to this city by the ship Birmingham 
from New York via Charleston. 

After this subject was disposed of, I told the count that as all our official inter- 
course had been of the most frank and friendly character, I felt it to be my 
duty to explain to him the reasons which would induce me to leave Russia 
sooner than I had at first intended. A short time before the departure of 
Mr. Clay with the treaty last winter, I had received information of my 
brother's death and of the declining health of my mother and eldest sister. 
These circumstances had naturally produced a desire to return home, and had 
besides imposed upon me new and urgent duties towards my family. In a 
private letter which I addressed to the President by Mr. Clay, I suggested 
that these considerations might induce me to ask for permission to leave St. 
Petersburg sooner than I had intended ; and upon his return in May last, I 
had received my letter of recall with the discretionary power of presenting 
it when I might think proper. The recent melancholy intelligence of my 
mother's death had increased my anxiety, and made the reasons for my de- 
parture still more urgent. 

He expressed his sorrow that I had been so unfortunate as to have lost 
ray mother and my brother since my arrival in St. Petersburg, and his regret 
that these circumstances should have rendered my departure necessary. 



212 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I told him I had not in the beginning intended to remain longer than two 
years, — I was no diplomat, and had never any desire to pursue this career. 
That I should now return to private life ; but in whatever circumstances I 
might hereafter be placed, it would always afford me great pleasure to exert 
any humble influence I might possess in cementing the bonds of friendship 
which now so happily united the two countries. 

He complimented me by saying, I had shown myself to be both an able 
and a successful diplomat, and he could assure me I had contributed much, 
since my arrival in this country, to promote kindly feelings between the two 
governments. He hoped I would carry with me agreeable souvenirs of my 
residence in St. Petersburg, and that my influence at home might be used in 
perpetuating the good understanding which now so happily existed. 

I had taken with me a copy of my letter of recall and of the concluding 
paragraph of Despatch No. 9, and upon presenting them, I read the latter 
to the count, containing an assurance of the high consideration with which 
the personal character of the emperor had inspired the President, and of the 
wishes he formed for his happiness and the prosperity of his empire. To 
this I added that such an assurance, proceeding from the source it did, was in 

itself the strongest evidence of its own sincerity 

James Buchanan. 

All things being arranged for his departure, Mr. Buchanan 
Lad his audience of leave of the emperor on the 5th of August, 
of which he gave a striking account to the Secretary of State 
in the following despatch written two days afterward : 

[to the HON. LOUIS McLANE, SECRETARY OF STATE.] 

St. Petersburg, August 7, 1833, N. S. 
Sir;— 

On Monday last, the 5th instant, 1 had my audience of leave of the em- 
peror, at the Palace of Peterhoff, twenty-six versts distant from this city. 
The conduct and conversation of his majesty throughout the interview were 
highly gratifying to myself; because they convinced me that I had conciliated 
his favorable opinion. This ought to be, next to the honest and independent 
discharge of his duty, the first object of a minister to Russia. Without it, he 
can never effectually serve his country. 

Towards the conclusion of this interview, you will perceive that the em- 
peror appeared to lay aside his official dignity and conversed frankly and with 
great feefing upon subjects winch I could never have imagined he would 
introduce. 

When I first entered he said : " What is the reason you are going to leave 
us ? 1 am very sorry for it. You have given us great satisfaction whilst 
you have been amongst us." After explaining to him the reason for my 



AUDIENCE OF LEAVE OF THE EMPEROR. 213 

departure, he expressed bis sympathy for me on account of the recent loss of 
my mother, and made some inquiries in relation to my family which I need 
not repeat. I then observed that, at the first, I had not intended to remain 
longer than two years. I was no diplomat, having never been engaged in 
that service before, and it was probable I should never again represent my 
country abroad. He said he liked me the better for it. He was no diplomat 
himself; his policy was always frank and open, and those who believed 
otherwise had greatly mistaken his character. 

I then presented to him my letter of recall, and told him I had been in- 
structed to assure him on this occasion of the continued desire felt by the 
President to foster the good understanding which now so happily subsisted 
between the two nations ; and to express the high consideration with which 
his majesty's personal character had inspired the President, and the wishes 
which he cherished for his happiness and the prosperity of his empire. 

He said it was very gratifying to his feelings to receive such an assurance 
from General Jackson. He had shown himself to be a man both of integrity 
and firmness, and he valued his good opinion very highly. He felt a great 
respect for the people of the United States. They were a true and loyal°peo- 
ple, and he should always endeavor to promote the most friendly relations 
Avith our country. 

1 then added, to that of General Jackson, my own humble testimonial of 
regard for his personal character, and the gratitude which I felt for his uniform 
kindness towards myself upon all occasions when I had the honor of meeting 
him. He replied that he felt much indebted to me for my good opinion, and 
trusted I should never have occasion to change it. He hoped I would re- 
member him with kindness when I returned to my own country. He enter- 
tained a high personal regard for myself; and it was a source of peculiar 
pleasure to him, that it had fallen to my lot to conclude the commercial treaty 
between the two countries. He was glad this treaty had given satisfaction 
in the United States, and he believed it would serve to strengthen the attach- 
ment between two nations who ought always to be friends. 

I observed it was one of the most agreeable occurrences of my life, to have 
been instrumental in concluding this treaty. I had no doubt it would be 
mutually beneficial to both countries. That wherever I was and whatever 
might be my lot, I should never cease to cherish the most ardent wishes for 
his happiness, and to use my humble influence in cementing the friendship 
between the two nations. This had been my constant object throughout the 
period of my mission. He said I had been eminently successful, and again 
assured me that my conduct had given him great satisfaction. 

•He then alluded, with considerable feeling, to the late debate in the 
House of Commons concerning Polish afiairs; he observed that he was the 
representative of a great and powerful nation. This station imposed upon 
him many and arduous duties. He had acted in his pubUc character, and 
upon views of public policy. But instead of considering the subject in this 
light, they seemed to have been instigated by a desire to abuse him person- 



214 LIFE OF JAJMES BUCHANAN. 

ally. He could appeal to God and his own conscience for the purity and 
correctness of his conduct; and whilst that was the case, he should have 
peace within his own bosom, and would not regard the opinion of the world. 
This was a delicate subject. I replied that I had read the debate witli con- 
siderable surprise. The distance at which my rank placed me from his 
majesty had enabled me to know but comparatively little of his personal 
character from ray own observation; but judging from that knowledge, as 
well as from the information I had been able to collect, since my arrival in 
St. Petersburg, I entertained not a doubt he had been treated with great 
injustice. Indeed, it was impossible for any person who knew him, to believe 
that the representation made in that debate could be true. 

And here permit me to declare that this is my honest conviction. I yield 
to no man in abhorrence for the diflerent partitions of PoLind, and in a desire 
to see the independence of that brave and gallant people re-established ; but 
truth compels me to say that the cruelties of the Imperial Groverument 
towards them have been greatly exaggerated. It is even notorious here that 
in several instances the sons of Polish patriots who died fighting for national 
independence are receiving their education at the expense of the emperor, and 
are treated by him with distinguished kindness. The exaggerated impressions 
which have been spread throughout the world upon this subject arise, in a 
great degree, from the want of anything like a free press in Russia. From 
this cause, the representations of the injured party pass every where current, 
almost without contradiction. Still, it cannot be denied that whenever 
Russian officers are entrusted with power over Poles, it will most probably 
be abused. This arises from the ancient and malignant personal hatred exist- 
ing between the two races. 

The emperor afterwards observed that the English nation had, in his 
opinion, been acting very unwisely. They had got tired of a constitution 
under which they had risen to a high degree of greatness, and which had 
secured them many blessings, and he feared they were now about to prostrate 
their most valuable institutions. He then asked me what route I intended to 
take on my return home. I told him I should pass through Hamburg, 
Amsterdam, the Hague and Brussels to Paris, where I expected to spend a 
few weeks. From thence I should pass over to London, and finally embark 
from Liverpool for the United States. I said I had no particular desire to 
visit Paris; on the contrary, I should rather spend what time I had to spare 
in seeing a part of England, Scotland and Ireland ; but it would be considered 
strange for an American to return from Europe without seeing Paris, the 
centre of so many attractions. This gave him occasion to speak of France. 
He said I was quite right in my intention to visit Paris. The French were a 
singular people. They were so fickle in their character, and had such a restless 
desire to disturb the peace of the world that they were always dangerous. 
They had tried every form of government and could not rest satisfied with any. 

French emissaries were now endeavoring every where to excite disturb- 
ances and destroy the peace all over Europe. 



AUDIENCE OF LEAVE OF THE EMPEROR. 215 

I observed we had always pursued a different course ia America. We 
were no propagandists. Perfectly satisfied with our institutions, we left to 
every other nation the task of managing their own concerns in their own 
manner. This had been the uniform policy of our Government since its origin. 

He replied that he knew the character of our nation well, and repeated 
they Avere a true and loyal people: lie had the greatest confidence in them. 
His own policy was the same as ours. He was no propagandist himself. All 
he desired was peace. He never interfered with the concerns of other 
nations when it could possibly be avoided. He desired peace above all things 
for Russia. But he said it seemed as if there were at present an evil spirit 
abroad throughout the world. He appeared to be particularly the object of its 
malevolence. (Evidently alluding to the Polish conspiracy.) He was in the 
hands of the Almighty, and would endeavor to do his duty fearlessly and 
honestly in the station where Providence had placed him, and in humble 
submission would leave the event to His will. Here he was evidently 
affected. 

He then bade me adieu, and embraced and saluted me according to the 
Russian custom, a ceremony for which I was wholly unprepared, and which I 
could not have anticipated. Whilst we were taking leave, he told me to tell 
General Jackson to send him another minister exactly like myself. He 
wished for no better. 

Upon leaving his presence I was sensibly impressed with the vanity of 
human greatness. The circumstances brought forcibly to memory the closing 
scene of the life of the Emperor Alexander. Throughout his last illness he 
refused to take medicine, and thus suffered his disease, which was not at the 
first considered dangerous, to become mortal. When Sir James Wylie, his 
physician, told him that unless he would submit to medical treatment his 
disease must prove fatal, the Emperor Alexander regarded him earnestly, and 
exclaimed in the most solemn manner, " and why should I desire to live ? " 
He continued to reject all remedies, and liis death was the consequence. On 
the truth of this anecdote you may rely. There was no foundation for the 
report that he had been poisoned. 

At the first, I had determined to suppress such parts of this conversation as 
were evidently confidential, together with the kind things which the emperor 
said to me personally ; but I afterwards concluded that it was my duty under 
my instructions to report the whole. This is done, under a full conviction that 
it will never meet the public eye. 

I had on the same day my audience of leave of the empress, who was 
very gracious, but what passed upon this occasion is not properly the subject 
for a despatch. 

I took leave of Count Nesselrode this morning, and presented Mr. Clay as 
charge-d'affaires. Time presses, and I shall leave him in his first despatch to 
give you a particular account of this interview. It was entirely satisfactory. 

Thus has my mission terminated ; and I cannot be mistaken when I say 
that these people now evince a much better feeling both towards our Govern- 



216 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

ment and the head of it than they did on my arrival. I have taken great 
pains, upon all proper occasions, to make the character and conduct of General 
Jackson known. Nothing more was necessary to make the man who enjoys 
the highest rank in our country stand also the first in their esteem. 

I have not seen or heard anything of Baron Sacken since his arrival in 
this city. 

Within the past few days it has been known here that the emperor had 
refused to receive Sir Stratford Canning as ambassador from England. As 
his reasons were altogether personal, this refusal can produce no serious 
difficulty between the two nations. The Russians say that Sir Stratford, when 
here before, evinced a captious and jealous disposition, which rendered him 
very disagreeable. 

I expect to reach the United States about the last of November or begin- 
ning of December. 

Yours very respectfully, 

James BucnANAN. 



CHAPTER X. 

1833. 

DEPAKTURE FROM ST. PETERSBUEG — JOURNEY TO PARIS — PRINCESS LIE- 
YEN — POZZO DI BORGO — DUG DE BROGLIE — GENERAL LAFAYETTE — 
LOUIS PHILIPPE — ARRIVAL IN LONDON— DINNER AT PRINCE LIEVEN's 
AND LORD PALMERSTON'S — PRINCE TALLEYRAND. 

MR. BUCIIAlSrAK commenced his homeward jom-ney on 
the 8th of August (1833). Omitting Avhat merely re- 
lates to places and things now well known to all travelers, I 
select the following passages from his diary : 

Thursday, August 8, 1833. 

I left St. Petersburg. Mr. Bligh, Mr. Gevers and Mr. Clay accompanied 
me as far as Cronstadt. At 6 o'clock in the afternoon we passed the guard 
ship and arrived at Travemunde, on Tuesday, the 13th, between 12 and 
1 o'clock in the day, after a rough and stormy passage. The boat (Alexandra) 
has not sufficient steam power for her tonnage, having only 140 horse-power 
for more than 700 tons, and the consequence is that she can make but little 
way against a head wind. The price of the passage is 250 roubles ($50), 
the consequence of an indiscreet monopoly which has been granted by the 
emperor. 

We had on board the Princess Lieven and her two youngest sons, the 
Princes George and Arthur, called after the late king* and the Duke of 
Wellington — the one about thirteen, the other nine — fine boys. Count Matus- 
cervie was also on board, bound for Aberdeenshire on a hunting expedition. 
He is excessively fond of horse-racing, hunting and all field sports, and seems 
to take much greater delight in talking of these subjects, than those of a 
serious nature. The princess has in a great degree lost that beauty which 
captivated the king and the Duke of W. Her nose is now sharp and her 
face somewhat red; but her manners and conversation are very fine. I 
consider her superior to Matuscervie as a diplomatist.! I endeavored to cul- 



* George IV. 

t This remarkable woman is regularly chronicled in Encyclopedias and Biographical Dic- 
tionaries as a Russian diplomatist. She certainly fulfilled that character in an extraordinary 
manner for a period of about forty years. When Mr. Buchanan met her, on his passage down 
the Baltic, she was on her way to join her husband in London. She was then forty-nine. 
The children referred to both died in 1835. The princess died at Paris, January 25, 1857, at 
the age of 73. She is said to have been a Protestant. In her later years she was a very in- 



218 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

tivate her good graces, not by assiduous attentions, which are often annoyinf 
but by kind and respectful conduct towards her whenever the opportunity 
occurred unsought. I succeeded. She is a woman and possesses all the 
superstitious feelings in regard to omens which distinguish the Russians. The 
count and myself made a bet on the length of the voyage, and drank the 
wine before its termination. This gave her much uneasiness, and the wind 
became more violent immediately after. The count wrote a complimentary 
certificate in the captain's [log] book, and it was signed before the close of the 
voyage. Immediately after we had quite a storm, which continued the whole 
night. I should have been alarmed myself, but thanks to the Yankee 
captain with whom I crossed the Atlantic, who would carry sail in a hurricane. 
Captain Dietz, of the boat, a round-foced and pleasant Dutchman, and a 
naturalized citizen of the United States, attributed our bad voyage entirely to 
the circumstance of having a parson aboard (The Rev. Mr. Kneill). He swore 
he could show all his [log] books and prove that, since he commanded a ves- 
sel, he had never made a single prosperous voyage with a clergyman on 
board. This was added to the stock of the princess's superstition, and I 
found her uneasy at the idea of having him on board, on their passage from 
Hamburg to London. I told her I considered it almost a moral phenomenon 
to see such a woman believing in these presages. She said she had not un esprit 
fort. She could not help it. She said Lady Holland was as bad as herself 
in this respect. It was she [Lady Holland] who had first informed her that 
it was bad luck to set out on a journey on Friday, The princess did not be- 
lieve it; but she had once tried it; her carriage was broken, and she injured, 
so as not to be entirely recovered for a year. 

Lord Wellington, she said, never thought himself wrong. He was always 
right, in his opinion. He had committed three great blunders whilst he was 
minister. 

The first was in sending Prince Polignac to govern France. The duke had 
told her that this prince was the greatest man in France. Politeness alone 
had prevented her from laughing in his face. He was mediocre panni les 
mediocres ; besides, he was obstinate to the very last degree. The second 
was on the Catholic emancipation question ; and the third in refusing all 
reform after having himself opened the door for it. 

Lord Lowther had called to see her in Hamburg, and informed her that 
there would have been, a few days ago, a new ministry in England, but for 
the timidity of Sir Robert Peel. I told her I thought this was prudence in 
Sir Robert. The Tories could not now govern England. She concurred in 
opinion with me ; said the duke was now near seventy, and could not aflbrd 
to wait, but that was not the case with Sir Robert. We talked of the 

PoUsh question, etc., etc Met Mr. Wheaton, his wife and daughter 

in Hamburg.* 

timate friend of M. Guizot, wlio was present at her death-bed. See further mention of her, 

JTOSt. 

* Henry Wlieaton, the learned author of " Elsmeuts of International Law," long in the 
diplomatic service of the United States. 



ARRIVAL IN PARIS. 219 

Tuesday, at 12 o'clock (day). 
We left Cologne and arrived in Aix-la-Chapelle, a distance of nine and a 
quarter German miles, through Bergheim and Juliers. Tlie latter strongly 

fortified. ir • .1 • 

The king of Prussia seems to be determined to strengthen himselt m this 
country. Judging from what I have observed myself and heard from others, 
he cannot rely upon the affections of the people. Indeed, they talk very 
freely They all rrfer to the days of Napoleon; and compare their situation 
then with what it is at present. The old maitre d'hotel at Bergheim, who 
has kept a public house for fifty years, and who seems to be a sensible and 
honest-hearted old man, told me that the taxes were not half so heavy under 
Napoleon as they wore at present. That he was the greatest man there had 
ever been in the world, and they loved the French much better than the 
Prussians. Other travelers, who understand German, have told me that at 
the public tables they talk of a revolution as certain ; without pretending to 
conjecture when it will take place. 

But the king of Prussia is a wise man. He has been taught in the school 
of misfortune, Ind has been greatly benefited by the lessons of that stern , 
mistress. There is great freedom of speech allowed throughout the Prussian 
dominions, and in those east of the Rhine the king is popular, notwithstand- 
ing the violation of his promise to give them a constitution. This arises from 
a general conviction of his wisdom and justice, and particularly from the 
equal conduct he has pursued towards all classes of his subjects. The people 
are pleased with him, because his conduct towards the nobles has given them 
no cause of jealousy. He is a democratic despot, and this is perhaps the true 
policy of all despots. 

In the Rhenish provinces, it is difficult for the people to rebel, m the midst 
of strong and almost impregnable fortifications and of troops faithful and 

well discipUned. 

Saturday night, August 31. (1833). 

Arrived in Paris, and went to lodgings provided for me by Mr. Harris,* 

in the Rue de Paix. 

Sunday. 

I walked to the Place Vendome, and saw the triumphal column. The 
statue of Napoleon was again placed upon its summit during the anniversary 
of what are called here the glorious days of the revolution of July (1830). 
I also visited the garden of the Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, and the Place 
of Louis XVI, between the two. Here this unfortunate monarch was 

A column is to be erected in the centre, exactly resembling Cleopatra's 
Needle. There is a model of it now standing. Dined with Mr. Harns-a 

man sufficiently civil and ceremonious, but a mannerist He has 

been so long in Europe as to have lost much of his Amer ican feelings, if he 

* At that time American charge d'affaires in Paris. 



220 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

ever possessed them in a strong degree. Not unskilful as a diplomatist. He 
is remembered kindly in Russia, whilst such men as Bayard and Pinkney are 
forgotten. He seems to have done his duty in relation to the confirmation 
of the French treaty by the chambers. 

Monday. 
Called on the Duke of Treviso (Mortier) and G-eneral Lafayette ; found 
them both in the country ; took a drive with Mr. Harris into the Bois de 
Boulogne. He is exceedingly anxious to be appointed minister to Russia. 
I also visited ISTotre Dame. 

Tuesday. 

Visited the Louvre. Whilst there, met very unexpectedly Walter Patter- 
son, Esq., of the State of New York, and Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Burns, of 
the same State. 

Afterwards called with Mr. Harris on Count Pozzo di Borgo ; * had an 
interesting conversation with him. He thinks the French selfish, that their 
courage proceeds from vanity, and that they are wholly unfit for the enjoy- 
ment of constitutional liberty. He says they will fight well, when seen, but 
are incapable of sustaining disasters. He has done everything he could to 
preserve peace ; but if war must come, he thinks the French mistaken as to 
its result. If one were to judge merely from the striking superiority of the 
Russian over the French troops in appearance, this conclusion would seem 
very natural. 

Saturday, Sunday and Monday. 

So unwell that I could not go out. Mr. Harris made a dinner party of 
Americans for me on Saturday, which, much to my regret, I could not attend. 
General Lafayette called and sat nearly an hour with me before he went to 
this dinner ; but I was in great pain the whole time. 

Judging from what I have heard from the General, Major Poussin and 
others, I have no doubt the Republican party are making rapid advances in 

* Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo was a native of Corsica, born at Ajaccio, in TiCA. His 
efforts, along with those of Paoli, to accomplish the liberation of Corsica from the French 
power, and place it under the protection of England, produced in him a decided leaning 
against France through his whole career. In 1803 he entered the diplomatic service of 
Russia, in which he continued for the remainder of his long life, under both the emperors 
Alexander I and Nicholas I. He was Russian ambassador at Paris from 1815 to the time of 
his death, with temporary absences in London on special missions. He died in 1845. At 
the period of Mr. Buchanan's visit to Paris, di Borgo was seventy years old, with as full and 
varied a diplomatic experience as any man of his time. He was celebrated for the brilliancy 
of his conversation in the French language. In the private journal of the late Mr. George 

Tlcknor, written at Paris in , I find the following passage : " I do not know how a 

foreigner has acquired the French genius so completely as to shine in that kind of conversa- 
tion from which foreigners are supposed to be excluded, but certainly I have seen nobody 
yet who has the genuine French wit, with its peculiar grace and fluency, so completely in his 
power, as M. Pozzo di Borgo." In a note to this passage Mr. Ticknor adds: '"I have 
learned since that he is a Corsican, and by a singular concurrence of circumstances, was 
bom in the same to\\Ti with Bonaparte, and of a family which is in an hereditary opposition 
to that of the emperor." It was no doubt with singular zest, that di Borgo, in 1814^15, took 
part in the great European settlement which dethroned Bonaparte. 



VISIT TO THE DUG DE BROGLIE. 221 

France. This is not confined to the lower orders, but extends to the highest 
circles. From all I can observe and learn, they are wholly unprepared for 
republican institutions. They want political virtue as much as any people. 
They are very selfish, destitute in a great degree of religion, and are always 
discontented with the present because they hope something from change. 
Political virtue, with the exception of Lafayette and a few others, don't exist 
among them. 

The policy of the latter [Lafayette] is that France shall now school herself 
preparatory to republican institutions, for fifteen or twenty years. But 1 
think he is afraid the change will take place sooner. He has lost much of 
his popularity in France, because they believe him to be an imbecile, and be- 
cause he will not lead the Republican party to immediate action. He has lost 
all confidence in Louis Philippe, who, in my opinion, is as desirous of being a 
Legitimate as the Emperor Alexander. 

In case of general republican commotions in France, a continental war 
becomes inevitable. The three great powers of Europe are preparing for it, 
and if one were to judge from the appearance of the Russian and Prussian 
soldiers compared with the French, he would be tempted to doubt the result. 
There is an energy in liberty, however, and there will probably be such an aid 
to its cause among the oppressed of Germany, Poland and other nations, that 
we may cherish the hope that France will not be overrun. I do not consider 
the French either safe or good apostles of liberty, I sincerely hope I am 
mistaken. Everything here is now Bonaparte ; and at present they appear to 
live upon the memory of their greatness under him. 

I ought always to remember with gratitude the kindness of Mr. Emlen, 
Doctor Fisher and Mr. Patterson* during my three days' sickness. Hope to 
be out to-morrow again. 

Thursday^ 12th. 

Thank God ! a fine day. Visited the Due de Broglie, in company with 
Mr. Harris. Conversation concerning the omission of the French Chamber to 
ratify the treaty. 

I told him that, however the government here might be able to satisfy that 
at Washington, and understand each other on the subject, their explanations 
could not reach the people of the United States. I had no doubt the trans- 
action would give rise to much unpleasant feeling among our people, and 
might lead to an unhappy state of feeling between the two countries. That I 
should not be astonished if this were to manifest itself on the meeting of 
Congress. He said that he was very sorry, Mr. Harris could appreciate his 
exertions ; he was happy to say tnat the feeling in favor of the treaty was 
growing ; the advantages of the commerce were becoming more manifest, and 
he had no doubt that one of the first acts which the Chamber would perform 
after its meeting, would be to ratify it. He hoped it would come so soon 
that Congress would receive the news before there was any expression of 



• American friendB. 



222 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

feeling. [He] Criminated Mr. Dupin in relation to it — said he only called for 
the papers because he knew that all the reports of previous commissions had 
been against the treaty. He said, although not a member of the administra- 
tion which made it, he approved it and would now make such a treaty.* 

Septemher \Wi. 

I dined to-day with Count Pozzo di Borgo. Before dinner he took Mr. 
Harris and myself into a room apart from the rest of the company, and told 
me he wished to communicate to me, so that I might inform the President, on 
my return, what was the true condition of Europe at the present moment. He 
said there did not exist at the present any immediate apprehension of war • 
though from the state of things there was no telling at what time war 
might take place. 

Everything was unsettled in France ; they were a turbulent and restless 
people, and busily employed with their propaganda. They were wholly un- 
fit for liberal institutions ; and, in fact, these were not what they wanted. 
They wished again for the glory of the times of Bonaparte. He could him- 
self, in a month, raise an insurrection in France ; but what the allied powers 
wanted was peace, and peace they would maintain so long as they could con- 
sistently with propriety. That this they did not wish from fear of the re- 
sult. Far from it. They, to wit, Russia, Prussia and Austria, were indissolu- 
bly united, and war with one would be war with all. 

Those three powers, with the German Confederation, could, in three 
months, bring an army of 600,000 men into the field, 500,000 infantry and 
100,000 cavalry, and have an army of reserve of the same number. The 
French journals were continually attacking them without cause, for interfer- 
ing with foreign states, but I understood him to say that Austria would in- 
terfere in Piedmont, and if the French should attempt to prevent it, the allies 
would make common cause against them. They disliked and distrusted 
France very much ; England not so much. If the latter would act a prudent 
and proper part, she might have great influence on the affairs of Europe ; but 
the English ministry were fools. They were encouraging France, and yet it 
was almost certain they would not fire a gun in defence of the latter. Eng- 
land depended upon her commerce, and she could not afford to lose that of 
the whole continent of Europe, which she would do in the event of war. 
She had acted very foolishly in giving Belgium to France. 

What he wished me especially to tell the President was that he hoped the 
United States in the event of a war would cause their neutrality to be re- 
spected, and would not sufifer the existence of illegal blockades. That in the 
event of war, England would have every interest to cripple American com- 
merce ; for, in that event, the commerce of the world would fall into the 
hands of Americans. That the English must even use their vessels to carry 
articles essentially necessary to them from the north of Europe. 

• Q^^post, in relation to this collision between France and the United States. 



CONVERSATION WITH COUNT DI BORGO. 223 

I promised I would communicate all he had said to the President, and 
observed that when we were comparatively feeble, we had gone to war for 
the purpose of maintaining our neutral rights upon the ocean; and that at 
this time of day, when we were much more powerful, neither the President 
nor people of the United States would suffer them to be violated with impun- 
ity. Our policy was peaceful ; we never interfered with the political con- 
cerns of other nations. The strictest neutrahty we should observe both from 
principle and from policy. This had been the course of our Government ever 
since the celebrated proclamation of neutrahty of General Washington, which 
I explained to him. I was not now afraid that England would, as she had 
done before, attempt to violate the neutral rights of a nation which in six 
months could put to sea fifty ships of the line and heavy frigates. He ex- 
pressed some admiration and astonishment at this statement, which was con- 
firmed by ;Mr. Harris, and observed he could not believe that they would. 

The conversation then turned upon the French treaty. He said he had " 
been speaking several times to Broglie, as he called him, upon the subject. 
He had done what he could for us. Broglie was well disposed, and he 
thought with the assistance of Lafayette and his friends, it would be ratified 
very early in the next session. I told him I had understood that Mr. Dupin, 
the President of the Chamber, was rather opposed to us. He said that Dupin 
was an unprincipled man, I think he said a rascal, very selfish, and fond of 
money. He was now receiving a pension of 200 or 300 pounds. I did not 
understand exactly from whom. 

After we went to table, we had much conversation in nearly the same 
strain. He told me he wished I could be present at two or three sittings of 
the Chamber. They were like cats, all in a passion, and all making a noise, 
and afterwards laughing ; wholly unfit for Hberty . They wanted such a man 
as Bonaparte and glory again, not liberty. 

Before we went to table I asked him what he thought of Louis Philippe, 
and whether the allied sovereigns had confidence in his character. He an- 
swered equivocally. Said Louis Philippe might be well disposed ; but he 
might be controlled by the factions, and made to do what he did not approve. 
His government wanted strength. 

At table, in speaking of the emperor [Nicholas], I said I had taken occa- 
sion, since my arrival in France, to speak of the personal character of the 
emperor to some persons, as I thought it deserved. He replied as if I had 
mentioned the name of Lafayette, which I did not, and asked what Lafayette 
had thought of that. I said that General Lafayette was aware of the good 
personal character of the emperor, and that of the empress, and the happy 
influence of their example on the Russian nobility, and had freely admitted 
it. He said that the general had lost his influence with Louis Philippe, and 
in a great degree in France. I observed that whatever opinion others might 
express concerning him, I considered it the duty of every American to speak 
with gratitude of him. Mr. Harris here shook his head at me, but I continued 
to talk about him, and the donation we had made him. The count said it 



224 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

was all spent, and I rej^licd I was very sorry for it. Various subjects were 
talked over, and the count took leave of me in the kindest and most aflfec- 
tionate manner. He was glad to have an opportunity of communicating 
this information to a gentleman of my character, who had been sent on a 
special mission to Eussia, and acquitted liimself in such a manner as I had 
done. General Jackson might probably have never heard of him; but he 
had often [heard] of the general, and respected his character very highly. I 
told him liis name was known throughout the political world. General 
Jackson would be proud of his good opinion, which I should not fail to com- 
municate. 

I forgot to mention that, at the proper place, I introduced the subject of 
the treaty concerning maritime rights, and said one object of my mission was 
to make a treaty which should assert these rights as between the two nations. 
He repHed that he presumed it had been explained to me that the reason 
why Eussia did not accede to this treaty at the present moment was the 
delicate relations between them and England. Such a treaty at this time 
would set England in a flame. Eussia was but a second-rate naval power. 
She agreed, however, entirely with the principles concerning maritime rights 
maintained by us, and at the jDroper time would assert them in the same 
manner as if she had entered into the treaty. In the course of the conversa- 
tion, he observed that the influence of Eussia was firmly established in Con- 
stantinople. Yes, I observed, she had been acting whilst the other powers 
were talking. I asked the true character of the sultan, and he spoke of him 
as rather a wavering and weak man, etc. 

Mr. Buchanan, after visiting the interesting old city of 
Kouen, embarked at Havre for Southampton, and arrived at 
Thompson's Hotel in Cavendish Square, London, on the ISth of 
September. A dinner at Prince Lieven's and another at Lord 
Palmerston's are the only things worthy of note that I find in 
his journal kept during this visit. 

Monday, September 23. 

Dined at Prince Lieven's. 

The company were the Prince and Princess, Prince Talleyrand and the 
Duchess de Dino* Prince Esterhazy, Baron Wessenberg, Lord Palmerston, 
Baron Biilow, Mr. Dedal, Mr. Vail, the Earl and Countess of Sefton, Mr. 
Lomonosoflf and myself— fourteen. The whole London conference there. A 
dinner given to Prince Talleyrand, who left London the next day for Paris. 

They were all very civil and kind to me, particularly Princess Lieven, Lord 
Palmerston and Prince Esterhazy. After dinner, I was introduced to Prince 
Talleyrand by Lord Palmerston, at the solicitation of the latter. He at once 

* The wife of Prince Talleyrand's nephew, the Due de Dino. 



PRINCE LIEVEX AND LORD PALMERSTON. 225 

asked me, in French, if I could speak French. I told him not well, but I 
could understand it. He then asked some questions about America, and 
inquired particularly for the family of General Hamilton, and about the 
descendants of General Schuyler. He said that when he was minister for 
Foreign Affairs, Colonel Burr came to Paris and sent his card to him. He 
returned the card, with a message that he had the portrait of General Hamil- 
ton hanging up in his parlor. 

They told me, before I made his acquaintance, that though eighty-three, by 
his own acknowledgment, his mind was as active as ever. This I doubt. 
He has the appearance of a very old man, though not very thin, like the 
French. At dinner he spoke very little, though he ate with a good appetite. 
They say he eats but one meal a day. After dinner he was a little more 
sprightly. He accepted an invitation to dine again with the Prince and 
Princess on the 8th December, at half-past seven, with pleasantry. Baron 
Biilow told me the next day that his ability and skill in the conference were 
wonderful. He would lie down and say nothing whilst all the rest were 
talking, but when they got tired and into confusion, he would come out with 
great power, and restore all things to their proper order. 

Lord Palmerston did not arrive at the dinner till after we had sat down, 
about eight o'clock. They say he is never punctual. He is an agreeable and 
open-hearted man to appearance. I had much conversation with him on three 
occasions, particularly after his own dinner, and he must be a great hypocrite 
if not in favor of promoting the most friendly relations between England and 
the United States. Prince Esterhazy on this day expressed his admiration of 
the President, and his warm friendsliip towards the American people, and 
said this was the feeling of Piince Metternich. He had recommended to the 
emperor to open diplomatic relations with us, which the latter had acceded 
to, and a minister would soon be sent. He spoke of his own country, 
Hungary, with great devotion, and said he never would have been a diplomat 
but for the friendship of the late king (George IV.). He pressed me several 
times to give Americans letters of introduction to him. 

Tuesday, 24. 

Dined at Lord Palmerston's. 

Lord Palmerston's dinner consisted of his Lordship, Princes Esterhazy and 
Lieven, Barons Billow, Wessenberg and Ompteda, Mr. Backhouse, Mr. Vail, 
Mr. Bacourt, Sir George Shea, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Sullivan, Jr. and myself. 

I sat next Baron Billow at table. He talked freely of the conduct of the 
King of Holland. Blamed his obstinacy and perverseness. Said he might 
yet bring ruin on his own head. The Dutch were an excellent people. He 
had deceived them, induced them to believe that all he wanted was the sepa- 
ration of Holland from Belgium upon fair terms, when he was only keeping 
the question open in the hope that he might get Belgium under his dominion 
again, which the Dutch did not wish. When they discovered they had been 
deceived, he did not know what might be the consequence. He said he 
could not anticipate when the conference would end. The King of Holland 

I.— 15 



226 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

could have got better terms formerly than it was possible for him now. 
He told me significantly that the King of Prussia would not meet the 
emperors of Russia and Austria in conference. The whole conversation 
coming from the Prussian minister to the conference astonished me. 

Mr. Bates* told me the English were fifty years behind the Americans in 
commercial enterprise and shipbuilding. He was examined before a com- 
mittee of the House of Commons. When questioned upon this subject, he 
said he had been kindly received and treated in England, and did not like to 
answer the question and have his answers published. They then told him to 
give his opinion, and it should not be taken down. 

He told them the reason of the superiority was in the character of masters 
and sailors. They were educated, had a sense of character and responsibility, 
entirely different from the same classes in England. Masters were respectable 
men, and sailors were now shipped from a reading-room in Boston. 

He expressed his opinion to me that the Americans would, before long, 
carry on the chief trade between England and China. Everything favored 
them. The destruction of the East India Company's charter and of the West 
India merchants, etc. 

[He speaks of] The astonishment of the shipbuilder, when he gave the di- 
mensions of a vessel to him, and his astonishment afterwards at being shown 
the American vessel which was his model, etc. 

* Joshua Bates, Esq., lontc the American partner of the house of Baring Brothers & 
Co., and for many years its head. 



CHAPTER XI. 

1833— 1836. 

MK. BUCHANAN RETURNS HOME — GREETING FROM GENERAL JACKSON — 
ELECTED TO THE SENATE OP THE UNITED STATES — STATE OF PAR- 
TIES — THE GREAT WHIG LEADERS IN THE SENATE — PERIL OF A 
"WAR WITH FRANCE. 

MR. BUCHANAN was greeted on his arrival at his home 
in Lancaster by the following letter from General 
Jackson : 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington, Nov. 18, 1833. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I have received your note by Mr. John Yan Buren, and am delighted to 
hear that you have reached your country in good health, after so long an 
absence in her service. I anticipate much pleasure from the personal inter- 
view, which you have promised me I shall have in the course of this week, 
but do not desire to hasten you more than your convenience, or the wishes 
of your friends will permit. I leave until then all else that I would say, 
except my congratulation on your safe arrival, which I beg you to accept 
with my best wishes for your health and happiness. 

Very sincerely and respectfully, 

Andrew Jackson. 

The winter of 1833-34 appears to have been passed in pri- 
vate occupations which have left no traces. But in the latter 
part of the summer of 1834, Mr. Buchanan was appointed one 
of the commissioners on the part of the State of Pennsylvania, 
to arrange with commissioners of the State of New Jersey, con- 
cerning the use of the waters of the Delaware. It was not 
entirely convenient for him to accept this appointment ; but as 
it was to be a public ser\ace without any pecuniary compensa- 
tion, he felt that he had no alternative. How long he was 
occupied about it, I have not discovered. In the following 
December, the election of a Senator of the United States, to 



238 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

succeed Mr. Wilkins, who had been appointed minister to 
Russia, was to be made by the Legislature of Pennsylvania. 
Mr, Buchanan was chosen on the 6th of December (1834), upon 
the fourth balloting; his principal competitors being Joel B. 
Sutherland, James Clarke, and Amos Ellmaker. Pie was of 
course elected by the Democratic members of the Legislature, 
and as a supporter of the administration of President Jackson.* 
The correspondence which took place between him and those 
who elected him, is of interest now, chiefly because it discloses 
that he held to what has been called the doctrine of instruc- 
tion ; that is to say, the right of a State Legislature to direct 
the vote of a Senator of the State in Congress, and the duty 
of the Senator to obey the direction. 

[to the HON. JAMES BUCHANAN.] 

Harrisbukg, Dec. 8, 1834. 
Dear Sir : — 

Ere this reaches you, doubtless you will have been notified of your elec- 
tion to the Senate of the United States, by the Legislative body of this State 
to which we have the honor to belong. And it is with unfeigned gratification 
that we individually can claim a participation in the confidence which has on 
this occasion been reposed in your talents and integrity. Nor is that gratifica- 
tion by any means lessened, ftom the consideration that you are the personal 
as well as the political friend of both our State and National Executives, who 
have done so much within their respective spheres to exalt the character and 
promote the interests of our State and Nation. And above all, who, in their 
official relations, so nobly stood forth in the rescue of our common country 
from the grasp of a corrupt moneyed monopoly, as reckless as it was 
aristocratical, and as merciless as it was powerful. And it is with no less pride 
than pleasure that we shall look to you, in your new and high relations, as the 
champion of the measures projected by our venerable President, Andrew 
Jackson, and seconded by our worthy Executive, George Wolf. 
Respectfully your friends and obedient servants, 

(Signed by) Jacob Kern, 

and Seventy other Members. 

The following communication, in reply, was laid before the 
members, at a meeting held in the Capitol on the Tth instant, 
by Col. Jacob Kern, Speaker of the Senate : 

* General Jackson's first term extended from March 4th, 1829, to March 4th, 1833. Hia 
second tenn ended March 4th, 1837. 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSTRUCTION. 239 

[to JACOB KEEN, ESQ., AND OTHERS, MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF 
PENNSYLVANIA.] 

Washington, Dec. 22, 1834. 
Gentlemen : — 

I want language to express my feelings on the perusal of your kind letter, 
which was delivered to me at the moment I was about to leave Harrisburg. 
Elevated by your free and unsolicited suffrages to the only public station I 
desire to occupy, it shall be my constant endeavor to justify, by my conduct, 
the generous confidence which you have thus reposed. The interest and the 
honor of Pennsylvania, so far as you have committed them to my hands, 
shall never be wilfully abandoned or betrayed. 

Although you have not asked me for any pledge or promise relating to my 
course in the Senate, yet I am sensible that many of you desire I should 
express my opinion publicly in regard to the right of legislative instruction. 
I shall do so with the utmost frankness. On this question I have not, and 
never have had, any serious difficulties. The right results from the very- 
nature of our institutions. The will of the people, when fully and fairly 
expressed, ought to be obeyed by all their political agents. This is the very 
nature and essence of a representative democracy. 

Without entering into an argument upon the general question, which 
would be altogether misplaced upon the present occasion, it may not be im- 
proper to observe that the principle applies with redoubled force to Senators 
in Congress. They represent the sovereign States, who are the parties to 
that constitutional compact which called the federal union into existence. In 
the Senate, these States are represented as distinct communities, each entitled 
to the same number of votes, without regard to their population. In that 
body they are all equal, as they were before the adoption of the federal con- 
stitution. Here, emphatically, if any where, the voice of the States ought 
to be heard, and ought to be obeyed. Shall it then be said that a Senator 
possesses the constitutional right to violate the express instructions of the 
sovereign State which he represents, and wield the power and the vote 
which have been conferred upon him for the benefit of his constituents in a 
manner which they have solemnly declared to be ruinous to their dearest 
interests, or dangerous to their liberties ! The bare statement of the proposi- 
tion carries conviction to my mind. All, or nearly all the State Legislatures, 
have long been in the practice of instructing their Senators, and this affords 
the strongest evidence of the principle upon which the custom is founded. 

It has been objected, that the right of instruction may destroy the tenure 
of the Senatorial office, and render it subject to all the political fluctuations in 
the several States. But the Senator is only bound to obey: he is not called 
upon to resign. And although there may be circumstances in which a man 
of honor might feel himself constrained to retire from the public service 
rather than give the vote of his State against his own convictions, yet these 
cases must, from their nature, be of rare occurrence. 



230 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Besides, this objection implies an entire want of confidence in the State 
legislatures. It supposes that they may become the instruments of faction for 
the purpose of harassing Senators, and compelling them to resign. In fact, 
it results in the principle that the people are incapable of managing their own 
concerns, and are, therefore, under the necessity of conferring an irresponsible 
political power upon one of their own number, to save them from themselves. 
From the nature of our institutions, we must repose such a degree of confi- 
dence in the State legislatures as to presume that they will not abuse the 
power with which they have been intrusted. 

If it should ever clearly appear, in any case, that the immediate represen- 
tatives of the people have not obeyed their will in voting instructions, this 
might present an exception to the general rule. Such an occurrence, how- 
ever, though possible, is highly improbable. It is not to be presumed that 
State legislatures will exercise this important power, unless upon grave and 
solemn occasions, after mature deliberation and a thorough knowledge of 
the public will. 

I have thus expressed my opinion freely upon this important question, 
though I am well aware it differs from that of some of the ablest and best 
men of our country.* 

In relation to the course which I intend to pursue in the Senate, I shall 
say but little. My conduct must speak for itself. I feel sensible that in point 
of ability I shall disappoint the partial expectations of my friends. To become 
distinguished in that body, the ablest in the world in proportion to its num- 
bers, requires a stretch of intellect and a range of political knowledge and 
experience, which I do not pretend to possess. Whilst, therefore, I cannot 
become "the champion of the measures projected by our venerable President," 
I shall, both from principle and inclination, give them an honest and consis- 
tent support. 

Before concluding this letter, permit me to state my entire concurrence in 
the sentiments you have expressed concerning " our worthy executive, George 
Wolf." In the darkest hour of pressure and of panic during the last winter, 
when the internal improvements of the State were, to all appearance, about 
to be arrested, he stood unmoved, and met the storm in a manner which 
proved him to be the able, faithful, and fearless representative of Pennsylvania 
Democracy. His message contributed much to dispel the gloom which, for a 



* Upon this vexed question of Instruction there is perhaps no more important distinc- 
tion than that which was drawn by Mr. Webster in his celebrated speech of March 7, 1850: 
namely, that where a State has an interest of her own, not adverse to the general interest of 
the country, a Senator is bound to follow the direction which he receives from the legisla- 
ture ; but if the question be one which afEects her interests, and at the same time atiects 
equally the interests of all the other States, the Senator is not bound to obey Ihe will of the 
State, because he is in the position of an arbitrator or referee. The first proposition seems 
evident enough, but of course it embraces none but a limited class of questions. It is in the 
far more numerous cases which fall under the second proposition that the difficulty inherent 
in the doctrine of instruction arises. Mr. Buchanan, it will be seen hereafter, consistently 
acted upon the view with which he began his senatorial career. 



STATE OF PARTIES. 231 

time, seemed to have settled on our country. It was the bright dawn of 
that glorious day of prosperity which we have since enjoyed. 

With sentiments of the most profound gratitude and respect, I remain 
Your obedient servant, 

James Buchanan. 

As I am now to trace a long senatorial career, wLicli began 
at a period when the Senate of the United States contained 
men of the very highest abihty and renown, it is proper to give 
a brief account of the state of parties and the questions of the 
time, and to fix Mr. Buchanan's position among the statesmen 
whom he had to meet. When he took his seat in the Senate, 
on the 15th of December, 1834, General Jackson was in his 
second term of office, which began on the 4th of March, 1833. 
He had received a very large majority of the electoral votes — • 
seventy-four more than were necessary to a choice. Mr. Yan 
Buren had become Vice-President by a majority of electoral 
votes less than General Jackson's, by the number of thirty. He 
was, of course, in the chair of the Senate. In Congress and 
throughout tlie country, the supporters of the administration 
had become known as the Democratic party, the old term of 
" Eepublicans," and the more recent one of " Jackson men," 
being generally dropped.* The opposition had become classified 
and consolidated under the name of the Whig party, a term 
substituted for that of " IS'ational Republicans." Their leader 
and candidate in the presidential election of 1832 was Mr. 
Clay.f There was a third party, known as the " Anti-Masons," 
who gave the seven electoral votes of Vermont to Mr. Wirt, as 
their candidate for the Presidency, and to Amos Ellmaker of 
Pennsylvania as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency. 

ISTotwithstanding General Jackson's great popularity and influ- 
ence throughout the country, a large majority of the Senate were 
opposed to his administration and his measures. This opposi- 
tion became concentrated and intensified by the President's re- 
moval of the public deposits from the Bank of the United 
States, into certain selected State banks. A resolution, strongly 

* General Jackson himself continued, during his Presidency and after his retirement, in 
his correspondence to apply to his party the term " Republican." 

t John Sargent of Pennsylvania was the Whig candidate for the Vice-Presidency along 
with Mr. Clay, and he received the same electoral vote. 



232 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHAN^VX. 

condemning this act, had been carried in the Senate, by twenty- 
eight yeas against eighteen nays, on the 28th of March, 1834, 
nine months before Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate. This 
vote may therefore be regarded as a general index of the rela- 
tive strength of parties in that body when Mr. Buchanan be- 
came a member of it. How this great opposition majority 
became so changed three years afterward, that the friends of 
General Jackson were able to expunge this resolution from the 
records of the Senate, will appear hereafter. The leading 
Senators of the opposition at the commencement of the session, 
in December, 1834, and distinctly classified as AVhigs, were 
Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Clayton of Delaware, Mr. Ewing of 
Ohio, and Mr. Frelinghuysen and Mr. Southard of New Jersey. 
The most important Democratic or administration Senators 
were, Messrs. Wright of New York, Benton of Missouri, and Mr, 
King of Alabama. Calhoun stood apart from both the political 
parties. He had been chosen Yice-President in 1828 by the same 
party which then elected General Jackson for the first time, and 
he then had the same electoral votes, witli tlie exception of seven 
of the votes of Georgia. He was consequently in the Chair of the 
Senate in 1830, when the great debate took place between Mr. 
Webster and Colonel Hayne on the subject of nullification. 
In 1833, when the South Carolina doctrine of nullification cul- 
minated in a threatened resistance to collection of the Federal 
revenue within her borders, and made it necessary for General 
Jackson to issue his celebrated proclamation, Mr. Calhoun 
was elected as a senator in Congress from South Carolina, and 
he determined to resign the Vice-Presidency. In December, 
1832, he took his seat in the Senate. The breach between him 
and the President, which was caused by the attitude of the 
latter towards the " ISTullifiers," was understood to be widened 
by the probability that Mr. Van Buren would be the Demo- 
cratic candidate for the Presidency, to succeed General Jackson 
in 1837, and by the well-known wish of the latter that Mr. 
Van Buren should become his successor. The breach between 
Mr. Calhoun and the President became still forther widened, 
when the State of South Carolina adopted her famous ordinance 
for preventing the collection of the Federal revenue within her 
limits. From General Jackson's known firmness of character 



THE GREAT LEADERS IN THE SENATE. 233 

and tendency to severe measures, Mr. Calhoun found himself in 
some personal danger. Then followed Mr. Clay's inteq)osition, 
by means of his compromise tariff, which was designed to ward 
oif an actual collision between tlie federal executive and the 
nullifying leaders of South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun was thus 
saved from personal humiliation, and perhaps from some per- 
sonal peril. But no real reconciliation took place between him 
and General Jackson, and he remained in an isolated position 
in the Senate, a great and powerful debater, vindicating with 
singular ability, when a proper occasion offered, his peculiar 
views of the nature of the Constitution, always discharging his 
duties as a senator with entire purity, but never acting upon 
any measure as a member of either of the political parties into 
which the Senate was- divided. 

Taking the entire composition of the Senate at that period, 
with the opposing forces of the Democratic and the Whig 
parties, and with Mr. Calhoun's intermediate position, there has 
never been a period in the history of that body, when there was 
more real power of debate displayed, or when public measures 
were more thoroughly considered. If Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun 
and Mr. AYebster towered above the other senators, there were 
not wanting men who may be said to have approached them in 
ability ; and if Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, on the Whig side, 
sometimes appeared to give to the opposition a preponderating 
intellectual tbrce, it was not always a supremacy that could be 
said to be undisputed by their Democratic opponents, although 
they did for a long time control the action of tlje Senate. The 
country looked on upon these great senatorial contests with 
predilections which varied, of course, with the political feelings 
and associations of men ; but the President, his measures and 
his policy, notwithstanding the power of the Senatorial opposi- 
tion, continued to grow in the popular favor, and to receive 
constant proofs of the popular support. To some of the prin- 
cipal questions of the time I now turn. The first in which 
Mr. Buchanan took part, soon after he entered the Senate, 
related to the conduct of France. 

In 1831 a convention was concluded between the United 
States and the government of King Louis Philippe, by which 



234 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the latter bound itself to pay to the United States twenty-five 
millions of francs, for the liquidation of certain claims of 
American citizens against France, and to be distributed to the 
claimants by the American Government, as it should determine. 
The Government of the United States, on its part, engaged to 
pay to the French government one million live hundred 
thousand francs, to liquidate the claims, urged by the French 
government for its citizens, on the United States, and to be dis- 
tributed by the French government, as it should determine. 
Each party bound itself to pay its stipulated sum in six annual 
instalments : those payable by the United States to be deducted 
from the larger sums payable by France. The first French in- 
stalment, $4,166,666.66, became due at the expiration of one 
year next following the exchange of ratifications. The exchange 
of ratifications took place February 2d, 1S32, and consequently 
the first French instalment became due on the 3d of February, 
1833. A bill of exchange was drawn by the Secretary of the 
Treasury on the French Minister of Finance, for the amount 
of the instalment, and sold to the Bank of the United States. 
Payment was refused at the French Treasury when the bill 
was presented, for the reason that the Legislative Chambers 
had made no appropriation to meet the instalment. We have 
seen that when Mr. Buchanan was in Paris, in the sum- 
mer of 1833 he held conversations on this matter with the 
Due de Broglie and Count Pozzo di Borgo ; from which it 
appears that moderate and rational persons in France then 
believed that the Chambers would at the next session make 
the necessary appropriation. In December, 1833, President 
Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, adverted to this 
subject, and said that he had despatched an envoy to the French 
government to attend to it, and that he had received from that 
government assurances that at the next meeting of the Cham- 
bers it would be brought forward and satisfactorily disposed of 
He added that if he should be disappointed in this hope, the 
subject would be again brought before Congress, " in such 
manner as the occasion might require." The opposition in 
France regarded this as a menace. The subject was brought 
before the Chambers several times, but in April, 1834, the ap- 



PERIL OF A WAR WITH FRANCE. 235 

proprlation necessary to cany the treaty into effect was re- 
fused. The king's government then sent a national vessel to 
this country, bearing the king's assurance that the Chambers 
should be called together, after the election of new members, as 
soon as the charter would permit, and that the influence of the 
executive should be exerted to procure the necessary appropria- 
tion, in time to be communicated to the President before the 
assembling of Congress in December, 1834. The Chambers 
met on the 31st of July, but this matter was not acted upon, 
and they were prorogued to the 29th of December. New 
assurances were given by the French government that at the 
ensuing session the appropriation should be pressed. In his 
annual message of December, 1834, the President made severe 
comments on the course of all branches of the French govern- 
ment, and recommended a law authorizing reprisals on French 
property, in case the appropriation should not be made at the 
ensuing session of the Chambers. This was the attitude of the 
matter when Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate.* 

The Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs, at the head of 
which was Mr. Clay, had made a report against the adoption 
of the President's recommendation. On the 14th of Januaiy, 
(1835) on a resolution introduced by Mr. Cuthbert of Georgia, 
Mr. Buchanan took occasion to say : 

* The pccret history of such collisions between governments not infrequently throws an 
nnexpceted light upon their public aspects. When General Jackson was preparing his an- 
nual message of December, 18:J4, some of his friends in Washington were very anxious that 
it should not be too peremptory on the subject of the French payment. At their request, 
Mr. Justice Catron, of the Supreme Court, waited upon the President, and advised a moder- 
ate tone. The President took from his drawer an autograph letter from King Louis Philippe, 
and handed it to the judge to read. In this letter the king represented that a war between 
the United States and France would be especially disastrous to the wine-growing districts, 
and that the interests of those provinces could be relied upon to oppose it ; but that it was 
necessary that the alternative of war should bo distinctly presented as certain to follow a 
final refusal of the Chambers to make the payment demanded. The king therefore urged 
General Jackson to adopt a very decided tone in his message, being confident that, if be did 
BO, the opposition would give way and war would be avoided. 

Another anecdote concerning this message was communicated to the writer from an 
entirely authentic source. After the message had been written, some of its expressions 
were softened by a member of the Cabinet, before the MS. was sent to the printer, without 
the President's knowledge. When it was in type, the confidential proof-reader of the Globe 
office took the proof-sheets to the President ; and he afterwarda said that he never before 
knew what profane swearing was. General Jackson promptly restored his own language 
to the proof-sheets. 



236 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

In Senate, January 14, 1835. 

France had, before the close of the last session of Congress, declared that 
it was the unanimous determination of the king's government to appear before 
the new legislature with its treaty and its bill in hand, and that its intention 
was to do all that the charter allowed to hasten, as much as possible, the 
period of the new presentation of the rejected law. The President rested 
satisfied with this assurance, and, on the faith of it, did not present the sub- 
ject to Congress. How has France redeemed this pledge ? Has that gov- 
ernment hastened, as much as possible, the presentation of the rejected law? 
At the first meeting of the new legislature the law was not presented ; and 
in the face of this engagement, the Chambers were prorogued, not to meet in 
the autumn, but on the 29th of December, the very latest day which custom 
had sanctioned. If this assurance had any meaning at all, it was that the 
Chambers should be convened at least in sufficient time to communicate to 
the President information that they had assembled, before the meeting of 
Congress. The President, at the date of the message, was not aware that 
the Chambers would assemble on the first of the month. No such informa- 
tion had been communicated to him. It now appears that they did assemble 
on that day. And the only reason that he should vote for the resolution 
was, that he was willing to wait until the result of their deliberations could 
be known. 

What effect this circumstance might have had on the President's mind, 
had he known of its existence, he was not prepared to say. He had no 
information to give on that subject. 

There is a point, sir, said Mr. Buchanan, in the intercourse between na- 
tions, at which diplomacy must end, and a nation must either consent to 
abandon her rights, or assert them by force. Afler having negotiated for a 
quarter of a century to obtain a treaty to redress the wrongs of our injured 
citizens, and after the French Chamber has once deliberately rejected that 
treaty, will not this point have been reached, should the Chamber again re- 
fuse to make the appropriation ? If this be so, is it not right, is it not fair, to 
present the alternative to France ? Would she not have just cause to complain 
if we should not adopt this very course ? To inform her frankly and freely 
that we have arrived at this point, I am solemnly convinced, is the best diplo- 
macy to which we can resort to obtain redress for the wrongs of the injured 
claimants. France will then have the alternative fairly presented ; and it will 
be for her to decide whether she will involve herself in war with her ancient 
ally, rather than pay those claims which the Executive branch of her Grov- 
ernment have determined to be just by a solemn treaty. Such an attitude on 
the part of America will do more for the execution of the treaty than any 
temporizing measures of policy which we can adopt. I never was more 
clearly impressed with the truth of any proposition. 

France, from the language of the Pi'esident, will have no right to consider 
this a menace. It is no more than to say, diplomacy has ended, and the 
treaty must be executed, or we shall, however reluctantly, be compelled to 



PERIL OF A WAR WITH FRANCE. 237 

take redress into our own hands. France is a brave and a chivalrous nation; 
her whole history proves that she is not to be intimidated, even by Europe 
in arms ; but she is wise as well as warlike. To inform her that our rights 
must be asserted, is to place her in the serious and solemn position of deciding 
whether she will resist the payment of a just debt by force. Whenever she is 
convinced that this result is inevitable, the money will be paid ; and although 
I hope I may be mistaken, I believe there will be no payment until she 
knows we shall assume this attitude. France has never appeared to regard 
the question in this serious light. 

It has been asked what the American Congress would do placed in similar 
circumstances. Would they appropriate money with a menaca impending 
over their heads? I answer, no, never. But I should never consider it a 
menace, if, after refusing to vote an appropriation to carry a treaty into effect, 
a foreign government in the spirit of candor, in language mild and courteous, 
such as that used by the President, were to inform us they could not abandon 
their rights, and, however painful it may be, they should be compelled, by a 
sense of duty, to assert them by force. 

After some further discussion, the resolution was so modified 
as to declare that it was at that time inexpedient to adopt any- 
legislative measure in regard to the state of aifairs between 
the United States and France. In this form the resolution 
was unanimously adopted. 

The President's message was received in Paris in the early 
part of January (1835). It was resented as a threat. The 
French minister at Washington was recalled, and on the 13th of 
January, the day before the vote in the Senate, Mr. Livingston, 
the minister of the United States at Paris, was informed that 
his passports were at his service. But a bill w^as introduced by 
the ministry in the Chambers, to make the necessary appropria- 
tion. It was passed in the latter part of April, but with an 
amendment making the payment conditional upon an apology 
from President Jackson for the language of his message of the 
previous December. There was little likelihood that any such 
apology would be made for language addressed by the Presi- 
dent to the people of the United States through their represen- 
tatives in Congress. On the contrary, in the early part of the 
next session (January, 1836) the world was somewhat startled 
by a recommendation made to Congress by the President, of 
partial non-intercourse with France.* On the 18th of January, 

* Mr. Ticknor, writing from Paris, February, 1836, said : " One thing, however, has done 
us much honor. General Jacljson's message, as far as France is concerned,— for they know 



238 LIJ^E OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

on a motion by Mr. Clay to refer this recommendation to the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs, 

Mr. Buchanan said that he had been so much gratified with the messao-e 
which had just been read, that he could not, and he thought he ought not, at 
this the very first moment, to refrain from expressing his entire approbation 
of its general tone and spirit. He had watched with intense anxiety the pro- 
gress of our unfortunate controversy with France. He had hoped, sincerely 
hoped, that the explanations which had been made by Mr. Livingston, and 
oflScially approved by the President of the United States, would have proved 
satisfactory to the French government. In this he had found his hopes to be 
vain. After this effort had failed, he felt a degree of confidence, almost 
amounting to moral assurance, that the last message to Congress would have 
been hailed by France, as it was by the American people, as the olive branch 
which would have restored amity and good understanding between us and 
our ancient ally. Even in this, he feared, he was again doomed to be disap- 
pointed. The government of France, unless they change their determination, 
will not consider this message as sufficient. We have the terms clearly pre- 
scribed by the Duke de Broglie, upon which, and upon which alone, the 
French government will consent to comply with the treaty, and to pay the 
five milhons of dollars to our injured fellow-citizens. Speculation is now at 
an end. The clouds and darkness which have hung over this question have 
vanished. It is now made clear as a sunbeam. The money will not be paid, 
says the organ of the French government, unless the Government of the United 
States shall address its claim officially in writing to France, accompanied by 
what appeared to him, and he behoved would appear to the whole American 
people, without distinction of party, to be a degrading apology. The striking 
peculiarity of the case, the one which he would undertake to say distinguished 
it from any other case which had arisen in modern times, in the intercourse 
between independent nations, was, that the very terms of this apology were 
dictated to the American Government by the French Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs. One of these terms was, that it had never entered into the inten- 
tion (pensee), the thought of this Government, to call in question the good 
faith of the government of France. 

But the French Government proceed still further. Upon the refusal to 
make this apology, which they ought to have known would never be made — 
could never be made — they are not content to leave question where it then was. 
They have given us notice in advance that they will consider our refusal to 

nothing about the rest of it,— has been applauded to the skies. The day it arrived I hap- 
pened to dine with the Russian minister here, in a party of about thirty persons, and I assure 
you it seemed to me as if nine-and-twenty of them came up to me with congratulations. 
I was really made to feel awkward at last ; but this has been the tone all over the Continent, 
where they have been confoundedly afraid we might begin a war which would end no 
prophecy could tell where." (Life, <£c., of George TicAnor, I. 480.) Count Pozzo di Borgo's 
company would not be likely to be composed of persons sympathizing with the French 
opposition. 



PERIL OF A WAR WITH FRANCE. 239 

make this degrading apology an evidence that the misunderstanding did not 
proceed on our part from mere error and mistake. 

In addition to all this, the last note of the Duke de Broglie to Mr. Barton 
declares that the Government of the United States knows that henceforward 
the execution of the treaty must depend upon itself. They thus leave us to 
decide whether we shall make the apology in the prescribed terms, or abandon 
our claim to the fulfillment of the treaty. 

He would not allow himself to express the feelings which were excited in 
his mind upon hearing these letters of the Duke de Broglie read. Most sin- 
cerely, most ardently, did he hope that the French government, when this 
message reached them, if not before, might reconsider their determination, and 
that all our difficulties might yet pass away. But their language is now 
clear, specific, incapable of ambiguity or doubt. It would, then, become our 
duty calmly, but firmly, to take such a stand as the interests and the honor 
of the country may require. 

Mr. B. had already said much more than he intended when he rose. He 
would, however, make another remark before he took his seat. He felt a 
proper degree of confidence, he might add a great degree of confidence, in 
the President of the United States. He knew him to be honest and firm, 
and faithful to his country; prompt to resent its injuries and avenge its 
wrongs. He confessed he had anticipated a message of a stronger character. 
He had supposed that a general non-intercourse with France would, at least, 
have been recommended. But the recommendation was confined to the mere 
refusal to admit French ships or French productions to enter our ports. It 
left France free to receive her supplies of cotton from the United States, 
without which the manufacturers of that country could not exist. This was 
wise, it was prudent; it left to France to judge for herself if this unnatural 
contest must still continue, whether she would close her ports against our 
vessels and our productions. 

In the spring of 1832 (Mr. B. did not recollect precisely the time) Con- 
gress passed an act to carry into effect our part of the treaty. Under this 
treaty, the wines of France had ever since been admitted into the United 
States upon the favorable terms therein stipulated. Her silks were imported 
free of duty, in contradistinction to those which came from beyond the Cape 
of Good Hope. She had for years been enjoying these privileges. Nothing 
milder, then, could possibly be recommended than to withdraw these advan- 
tages from her, and to exclude her vessels and her productions from our ports. 
Mr. Buchanan said that when he made the observations which had called 
forth the remarks of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun) he had 
believed the message to be the harbinger of peace, and not of war. This was 
still his opinion. In this respect he differed entirely from the gentleman. 
Under this impression, he had then risen merely to remark that, considering 
the provocation which we had received, the tone, the spirit, and the recom- 
mendations themselves, of the message, were mild and prudent, and were well 



240 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

calculated to make an impression upon Fiance, and to render her sensible 
of her injustice. 

It had been far from his intention to excite a general debate on tlie French 
question, and he would not be drawn into it now by the remarks of the Sen- 
ator from South Carolina. He must, however, be permitted to say, he was 
sorry, very sorry, that the gentleman had proclaimed that, if war should 
come, we are the authors of that war, and it would be the fault, not of the 
French, but of the American Government. Such a declaration, proceeding 
from such a source, from a voice so powerful and so potent, would be heard 
on the other side of the Atlantic, and there might produce a most injurious 
effect. He was happy to say that this sentiment was directly at war with 
the opinion of our Committee on Foreign Relations, who, in their report of 
the last session, had expressed the decided opinion that the American Gov- 
ernment, should it become necessary, must insist upon the execution of the 
treaty. It was at war with the unanimous resolution of the House of Rep- 
resentatives of the same session, declaring that the treaty must be maintained. 
He believed it was equally at war with the feelings and opinions of the 
American people. 

Whilst he expressed his hope and his belief that this message would prove 
to be the olive branch of peace, still there was so much uncertainty in the 
event, that it now became our imperative duty to prepare for the worst. Shall 
we (said Mr. B.) whilst a powerful fleet is riding along our southern coast, 
in a menacing attitude, sit here and withhold from the President the means 
which arc necessary to place our country in a state of defence ? He trusted 
this would never, never be the case. 

The messages and documents were then read, and referred to the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, as moved by Mr. Clay. 

On the last niglit of the session, which terminated on the 3d- 
4th of March, 1835, an amendment made in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, to the Fortification bill, was before the Senate. It 
proposed : 

'• That the sum of three millions of dollars be and the same is hereby 
appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, 
to be expendetl, in whole or in part, under the direction of the President 
of the United States, for the military and naval service, including forti- 
fications and ordnance and increase of the navy : Provided such expen- 
ditures shall be rendered necessary for the defence of the country, prior to 
the next meeting of Congress." 

The motive of this amendment was to enable the President 
to put the country into a more efiicient state of defence, in view 
of the danger of a war with France. It was opposed by Mr. 
Webster and Mr. Clay as an unconstitutional mode of action, 



SPEECH ON THE APPROPRIATION BILL. 241 

and also because the state of the French question did not require 
such action. Mr. Buchanan (on the 3d of March, 1835,) vindi- 
cated the amendment in the following manner : 

Mr. Buchanan said he was astonished at the remarks which had been made 
by gentlemen on the subject of this appropriation. The most fearful appre- 
hensions had been expressed, the destruction of our liberties had been pre- 
dicted, if we should grant to the President three millions of dollars to defend 
the country, in case it should become necessary to expend it for that purpose, 
before the next meeting of Congress. For his part, he could realize no such 
dangers. 

Gentlemen have said, and said truly, that the Constitution of the United 
States has conferred upon Congress, and Congress alone, the power of de- 
claring war. "When they go further, and state that this appropriation will 
enable the executive to make war upon France, without the consent of Con- 
gress, they are, in my humble judgment, entirely mistaken. 

Sir, said Mr. B., what is the true nature, and what are the legitimate ob- 
jects of this appropriation ? Do we not know that, although the President 
cannot make offensive war against France, France may make war upon us ; 
and that we may thus be involved in hostilities in spite of ourselves, before 
the next meeting of Congress ? If the Chamber of Deputies should deter- 
mine to violate the treaty, and to fix an enduring stigma upon the public 
faith of the French nation, is it certain that France may not proceed a step 
further, and strike the first blow? Mr. Livingston himself, in the corres- 
pondence which had been communicated to us by the President, has ex- 
pressed serious apprehensions that this may be the result. France may con- 
sider war, eventually, to be inevitable ; she may, and I trust does, believe that 
we have determined not to submit patiently to her violation of a solemn 
treaty and thus abandon the just claims of our injured citizens ; and taking 
advantage of our unprepared condition, she may commence hostilities herself. 
The first blow is often half the battle between nations as well as individuals. 
Have we any security that such will not be her conduct? Have we any 
reason to believe she will wait until we are ready ? Her past history forbids 
us to indulge too securely in any such belief. If she should adopt this course, 
in what a fearful condition shall we place the country, if we adjourn without 
making this appropriation! The Senate will observe that not a dollar of this 
money can be drawn from the Treasury, unless it shall become necessary for 
the defence of the country, prior to the next meeting of Congress. 

Another circumstance which renders this appropriation indispensable is, 
that Congress cannot possibly be convened by the President much before 
their usual time of meeting. There are, I believe, nine States in this Union, 
who have not yet elected their representatives to the next Congress. Some 
of these elections will take place in April, and others not till August, and 
even October. We have now arrived almost at the last hour of our poUtical 
I.— 16 



242 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

existence ; and shall we leave the country wholly defenceless until the meet- 
ing of the next Congress ? Gentlemen have warned us of the fearful respon- 
sibility which we should incur in making this appropriation. Sir, said Mr. 
B., I warn them that the responsibility will be still more dreadful, should we 
refuse it. In that event, what will be our condition should we be attacked 
by France ? Our sea-coast, from Georgia to Maine, will be exposed to the 
incursions of the enemy ; our cities may be plundered and burned ; the na- 
tional character may be disgraced ; and all this whilst we have an overflowing 
Treasury. When I view the consequences which may possibly flow from our 
refusal to make this grant, I repeat that the responsibility of withholding it 
may become truly dreadful. No portion of it shall rest upon my shoulders. 

Our constitutional right to appropriate this money is unquestionable. 
Whilst I express this opinion, I am sorry that the present appropriation is not 
more specific in its objects. Appropriation bills ought to be passed in such a 
manner as to leave as Httle to executive discretion as possible. The purposes 
for which the money is to be applied ought to be clearly and distinctly 
stated. If there were time to do it, the bill might be improved in this 
respect. But, sir, this is an extraordinary crisis, and demands prompt action. 
We must now take it as it is, or not take it at all. There is no time left to 
make the changes which might be desired. 

Gentlemen have contended that, under this appropriation, the President 
would be authorized to increase the army, and appoint as many new oflScers 
to command it as he thought proper. But this is not the case. He could 
not, under any just construction of this bill, raise a single new company, or 
appoint a single officer, not authorized by existing laws. No such power is 
conferred upon him by its terms. It will authorize him to expend three 
milUons of the public money, should the contingency happen which it con- 
templates, for putting the vessels of war now in ordinary in a condition for 
actual service, and for completing those the building of which has already 
been authorized by Congress. The money may also be applied to the com- 
pletion and repair of our fortifications, and in placing them in a state of se- 
curity and defence against any attack. Should it become necessary to call 
out the militia under existing laws, to garrison these fortifications, or defend 
our coast, this money may also be expended for that purpose. There is 
nothing in the language of the appropriation to justify the construction that 
the President might raise new armies, and create new officers to command 
them. 

It is my own impression that there will be no necessity for expending any 
portion of this money. If there should be, however : and it is the part of 
Avisdom to provide against such a contingency; let the responsibility rest 
upon those who refuse the appropriation. The country will be left defence- 
less, and the very knowledge of this circumstance may invite an attack. 

The entire Fortification Bill failed to be passed at this session, 
in consequence of the disagreement between the two houses in 



SPEECH ON SURPLUS REVENUE. 243 

regard to this three million appropriation. At the next session, 
which began in December, 1835, Colonel Benton of Missouri 
introduced in the Senate certain resolutions for setting apart so 
much of the surplus revenue as might be necessary for the de- 
fence and permanent security of the country. On the 1st and 
2d of February, 1836, Mr. Buchanan addressed the Senate on 
these resolutions as follows : 

Mr. President : I am much better pleased with the first resolution offered 
by the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton) since he has modified it upon the 
suggestion of the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy). When individuals 
have more money than they know how to expend, they often squander it 
foolishly. The remark apphes, perhaps, with still greater force to nations. 
When our Treasury is overflowing, Congress, who are but mere trustees for 
the people, ought to be especially on their guard against wasteful expenditures 
of the public money. The surplus can be applied to some good and useful 
purpose. I am wiUing to grant all that may be necessary for the public 
defence • but no more. I am therefore pleased that the resolution has 
assumed its present form. 

The true question involved in this discussion is, on whom ought the re- 
sponsibiUty to rest for having adjourned on the 3d of March last without pro- 
viding for the defence of the country. There can be no doubt a fearful responsi- 
bility rests somewhere. For my own part, I should have been willing to leave 
the decision of this question to our constituents. I am a man of peace ; and 
dislike the crimination and recrimination which this discussion must neces- 
sarily produce. But it is vain to regret what cannot now be avoided. The 
friends of the administration have been attacked ; and we must now defend 
ourselves. I deem it necessary, therefore, to state the reasons why I voted, 
on the 3d of March last, in favor of the appropriation of three millions for 
the defence of the country, and why I glory in that vote. 

The language used by Senators in reference to this appropriation has been 
very strong. It has been denounced as a violation of the Constitution. It 
has been declared to be such a measure as would not have received the 
support of the minority, had they believed it could prevail, and they would 
be held responsible for it. It has been stigmatized as most unusual — most 
astonishing — most surprising. And finally, to cap the climax, it has been 
proclaimed that the passage of such an appropriation would be virtually to 
create a dictator, and to surrender the power of the purse and the sword 
into the hands of the President. 

I voted for that appropriation under the highest convictions of public duty, 
and I now intend to defend my vote against all these charges. 

In examining the circumstances which not only justified this appropriation, 
but rendered it absolutely necessary, I am forced into the discussion of the 
French question. We have been told, that if we should go to war with 



244 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

France, we are the authors of that war. The Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 
Southard), has declared that it will be produced by the boastful vanity of one 
man, the petulance of another, and the fitful violence of a third. It would 
not be difficult to conjecture who are the individuals to whom the Senator 
alludes. 

He has also informed us, that in the event of such a war, the guilt which 
must rest somewhere will be tremendous. 

Now, sir, I shall undertake to prove, that scarcely an example exists in his- 
tory of a powerful and independent nation having suffered such wrongs and in- 
dignities as we have done from France, with so much patience and forbearance. 
If France should now resort to arms, — if our defenceless seacoast should be 
plundered, — if the blood of our citizens should be shed, — the responsibility 
of the Senate, to use the language of the gentleman, will be tremendous. I 
shall not follow the example of the Senator, and say, their guilt, — because 
that would be to attribute to them an evil intention, which I believe (^id not 
exist. 

In discussing this subject, I shall first present to the view of the Senate 
the precise attitude of the two nations towards each other, when the appro- 
priation of three millions was refused, and then examine the reasons which 
have been urged to justify this refusal. After having done so, I shall exhibit 
our relations with France as they exist at the present moment, for the pur- 
pose of proving that we ought now to adopt the resolutions of the gentleman 
from Missouri, and grant all necessary appropriations for the defence of the 
country. 

In discussing this subject, it is not my intention to follow the fortification 
bill either into the chamber of the committee of conference, or into the hall 
of the House of Representatives. It is not my purpose to explain the con- 
fusion which then existed, and which always must exist after midnight, on 
the last evening of the session. I shall contend that the Senate ought to 
have voted the three millions; that the fortification bill ought to have passed 
the Senate with this amendment ; and that, therefore, the Senate is respon- 
sible not only for the loss of this appropriation, but for that of the entire bill. 

What then was the attitude in which we stood towards France at the 
moment when the Senate rejected this appropriation for the defence of the 
country ? What, at that moment, was known, or ought to have been known, 
in regard to this question by every Senator on this floor? 

The justice of our claims upon France are now admitted by all mankind. 
Our generosity was equal to their justice. When she was crushed in the 
dust by Europe in arms— when her cities were garrisoned by a foreign foe— 
when her independence was trampled under foot, we refused to urge our 
claims. This was due to our ancient ally. It was due to our grateful remem- 
brance of the days of other years. The testimony of Lafayette conclusively 
estabUshes this fact. In the Chamber of Deputies, on 13th June, 1833, he 
declared that we had refused to unite with the enemies of France in urging 
our claims in 1814 and 1815; and that, if we had done so, these claims would 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 345 

then have been settled. This circumstance will constitute one of the brightest 
pages of our history. 

Was the sum secured to our injured fellow-citizens by the treaty of the 
4th July, 1831, more than they had a right to demand? Let the report of 
our Committee on Foreign Relations, at the last session, answer this question. 
They concur entirely with the President, in the statement he had made in his 
message, that it was absolutely certain the indemnity fell far short of the 
actual amount of our just claims, independently of damages and interest for 
the detention ; and that it was well known at the time that in this respect, 
the settlement involved a sacrifice. But there is now no longer room for any 
conjecture or doubt upon this subject. The commissioners under the treaty 
have closed their labors. From the very nature of their constitution, it be- 
came the interest of every claimant to reduce the other claims as much as 
possible, so that his own dividend might thus be increased. After a laborious 
and patient investigation, the claims which have been allowed by the com- 
missioners amount to $9,352,193.47. Each claimant will receive but little 
more than half his principal, at the end of a quarter of a century, after losing 
all the interest. 

Why then has this treaty remained without execution on the part of 
France, until this day ? Our Committee on Foreign Relations, at the last 
session, declared their conviction that the King of France " had invariably, 
on all suitable occasions, manifested an anxious desire, faithfully and honestly, 
to fulfil the engagements contracted under his authority and in his name." 
They say, that " the opposition to the execution of the treaty, and the pay- 
ment of our just claims, does not proceed from the king's government, but 
from a majority in the Chamber of Deputies." 

Now, sir, it is my purpose to contest this opinion, and to show, as I think 
I can conclusively, that it is not a just inference from the facts. 

And here, to prevent all possible misconstruction, either on this side, or on 
the other side of the Atlantic, if by any accident my humble remarks should 
ever travel to such a distance, permit me to say that I am solely responsible 
for them myself These opinions were in a degree formed while I was in a 
foreign land, and were there freely expressed upon all suitable occasions. I 
was then beyond the sphere of party influence and felt only as an American 
citizen. 

Is it not then manifest, to use the language of Mr. Livingston in his 
note to the Count de Rigny of the 3d August, 1834, that the French govern- 
ment have never appreciated the importance of the subject at its just value ? 
There are two modes in which the king could have manifested this anxious 
desire faithfully to fulfil the treaty. These are, by words and by actions. 
When a man's words and his actions correspond, you have the highest evi- 
dence of his sincerity. Even then he may be a hypocrite in the eyes of that 
Being before whom the fountains of human action are unveiled. But when 
a man's words and his actions are at variance, — when he promises and does 
not perform or even attempt to perform, — when "he speaks the word of 



246- LIFE OF JAJ*IES BUCHANAN. 

promise to the ear and breaks it to the hope," — the whole world will at once 
pronounce him insincere. If this be true in the transactions of common life, 
with how much more force does it apply to the intercourse between diploma- 
tists? The deceitfulness of diplomacy has become almost a proverb. In 
Europe the talent of over-reaching gives a minister the glory of diplomatic 
skill. The French school has been distinguished in this art. To prove it, I 
need only mention the name of Talleyrand. The American school teaches 
far different lessons. On this our success has, in a great degree, depended. 
The skillful diplomatists of Europe are foiled by the downright honesty and 
directness of purpose which have characterized all our negotiations. 

Even the established forms of diplomacy contain much unmeaning lan- 
guage, which is perfectly understood by everybody, and deceives nobody. 
If ministers have avowed their sincerity, and their ardent desire to execute 
the treaty ; to deny them, on our part, would be insulting, and might lead to 
the most unpleasant consequences. In forming an estimate of their inten- 
tions, therefore, every wise man will regard their actions, rather than their 
words. By their deeds they shall be known. Let us then test the French 
government by this touchstone of truth. 

The ratifications of the treaty of the 4th July, 1831, were exchanged at 
Washington, on the 2d February, 1833. When this treaty arrived in Paris, 
the French Chambers were in session, and they continued in session for 
several weeks. They did not adjourn, until the 19th of April. No time 
more propitious for presenting this treaty to the Chambers, could have been 
selected, than that very moment. Europe then was, as I believe it still is, 
one vast magazine of gunpowder. It was generally believed, that the Polish 
revolution was the spark which Avould produce the explosion. There was 
imminent danger of a continental war, in which France, to preserve her 
existence, would have to put forth all her energies. Russia, Prussia, and 
Austria, were armed and ready for the battle. It was then the clear policy 
of France to be at a good understanding with the United States. If it had 
been the ardent desire of the king's government, to carry into effect the 
stipulations of the treaty, they would have presented it to the Chambers 
before their adjournment. This would undoubtedly have been the course 
pursued by any President of the United States, under similar circumstances. 
But the treaty was not presented. 

I freely admit, that this omission, standing by itself, might be explained 
by the near approach of the adjournment, at the time the treaty arrived from 
Washington. It is one important link, however, in the chain of circum- 
stances, which cannot be omitted. 

The Government of the United States proceeded immediately to execute 
their part of the treaty. By the act of the 13th July, 1832, the duties on 
French wines were reduced according to its terms, to take effect from the 
day of the exchange of ratifications. At the same session, the Congress of 
the United States, impelled no doubt by their kindly feelings towards France, 
which had been roused into action by what they believed to be a final and 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 247 

equitable settlement of all our disputes, voluntarily reduced the duty upon 
silks coming from this side of the Cape of Good Hope to five per cent., whilst 
those beyond were fixed at ten per cent. And at the next session, on the 
2d of March, 1833, this duty of five per cent, was taken off altogether ; and 
ever since, French silks have been admitted into our country free of duty. 
There is now, in fact, a discriminating duty of ten per cent, in their favor, over 
silks from beyond the Cape of Good Hope. 

What has France gained by these measures, in duties on her wines and her 
silks, which she would otherwise have been bound to pay ? I have called 
upon the Secretary of the Treasury, for ihe purpose of ascertaining the 
amount. I now hold in my hand a tabular statement, prepared at my re- 
quest, which shows, that had the duties remained what they were at the 
date of the ratification of the treaty, these articles, since that time, would have 
paid into the Treasury on the 30th September, 1834, the sum of $3,061,525. 
Judo-ing from the large importations which have since been made, I feel no 
hesitation in declaring it as my opinion that, at the present moment, these 
duties would amount to more than the whole indemnity which France has 
engaged to pay to our fellow-citizens. Before the conclusion of the ten years 
mentioned in the treaty, she will have been freed from the payment of duties 
to an amount considerably above twelve millions of dollars. 

By the same act of the 13th July, 1832, a board of commissioners was 
established to receive, examine, and decide the claims of our citizens under 
the treaty, who were to meet on the first day of the following August. 
This act also directed the Secretary of the Treasury to cause the several 
instalments, with the interest thereon, payable to the United States in virtue 
of the convention, to be received from the French government and transferred 
to the United States in such manner as he may deem best. In this respect 
the provisions of the act corresponded with the terms of the treaty, which 
prescribe that the money shall be paid into the hands of such person or persons 
as shall be authorized to receive it by the Government of the United States. 

Were the French government immediately informed of all these proceed- 
ings? Who can doubt it? Certainly no one at all acquainted with the 
vigilance and zeal of their diplomatic agents. 

The 19th of November, 1832, the day for the meeting of the Chambers, at 
length arrived. — Every American was anxious to know what the king would 
say in his speech concerning the treaty. No one could doubt but that he 
would strongly recommend to the Chambers to make the appropriation of 
twenty-five millions of francs, the first instalment of which would become 
due on the 2d of February following. All, however, which the speech con- 
tains in relation to the treaty is comprised in the following sentences : " I 
have also ordered my minister to communicate to you the treaty concluded 
on the 4th July, 1831, between my government and that of the United States 
of America. This arrangement puts an end to the reciprocal claims of th^ 
two countries." Now, sir, I am well aware of the brevity and non-committal 
character of kings' speeches in Europe. I know the necessity which exists 



248 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

there for circumspection and caution. But making every fair allowance for 
these considerations, I may at least say, that the speech does not manifest an 
anxious desire to carry the treaty into effect. What might the king have 
said; what ought he have said; what would he have said had he felt this 
anxious desire ? It might all have been embraced in a single additional sen- 
tence, such as the following : " The Congress of the United States have already 
provided for the admission of French wines into their ports upon the terms 
of this treaty, and have voluntarily reduced their duties upon French silks, I 
must, therefore, request you to grant me the means of discharging the first 
instalment which will become due, under this treaty, on the 2d day of Feb- 
ruary next." The king did not even ask the Chambers for the money neces- 
sary to redeem the faith of France. In this respect the debt due to the 
United States is placed in striking contrast to the Greek loan. — Immediately 
after the two sentences of the speech, which I have already quoted, the king 
proceeds : " You will likewise be called to examine the treaty by which 
Prince Otho of Bavaria is called to the throne of Greece. I shall have to re- 
quest from you the means of guaranteeing , in union with my allies, a loan which 
is indispensable for the establishment of the new State founded by our cares and 
concurrence.^' 

The establishment of the new State founded by our cares and concur- 
rence! Russia, sir, has made greater advances by her skill in diplomacy 
than by her vast physical power. Unless I am much mistaken, the creation 
of this new State, with Prince Otho as its king, will accomplish the very 
object which it was the interest and purpose of France to defeat. It will, in 
the end, virtually convert Greece into a Russian province. I could say much 
more on the subject, but I forbear. My present purpose is merely to present 
in a striking view, the difference between the king's language in relation to 
our treaty, and that treaty which placed the son of the king of Bavaria on 
the throne of Greece. 

Time passed away, and the 2d February, 1833, the day when the first 
instalment under the treaty became due, arrived. It was to be paid " into 
the hands of such person or persons as shall be authorized by the Govern- 
ment of the United States to receive it." The money on that day ought to 
have been ready at Paris. But strange, but most wonderful as it may appear, 
although the Chambers had been in session from the 19th of November until 
the 2d of February, the king's government had never even presented the 
treaty to the Chambers, — had never even asked them for a grant of the 
money necessary to fulfil its engagements. Well might Mr. Livingston say, 
that they had never properly appreciated the importance of the subjects 

The Government of the United States, knowing that the king in his 
speech had promised to present the treaty to the Chambers, and knowing 
that they had been in session since November, might have taken means to 
demand the first instalment at Paris on the 2d day of February. Strictly 
speaking, it was their duty to do so, acting as trustees for the claimants. 
But they did not draw a bill of exchange at Washington for the first instal- 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 249 

ment, until five days after it bad become due at Paris. This bill was not 
presented to tlie French government for payment until the 23d of March, 
1833. Even at that day the French ministry had not presented either the 
treaty, or a biU to carry it into effect, to the Chambers. The faith of France 
was thus violated by the neglect of the king's government, long before any 
bill was presented. They, and not the Chambers, are responsible for this 
violation. It was even impossible for the Chambers to prevent it. Had this 
treaty and bill been laid before them in time to have enabled them to redeem 
the faith of France, the loyalty of the French character would never have 
permitted them to be guilty of a positive violation of national honor. The 
foith of the nation was forfeited before they were called upon to act. The 
responsibility was voluntarily assumed by the king's ministers. The Cham- 
bers are clear of it. Besides, the ministry were all powerful with the Cham- 
bers during that session. They carried everything they urged. Even the 
bill providing the means of guaranteeing the Greek loan became a law. Can 
it then for a single moment be believed that if a bill to carry into effect our 
treaty — a treaty securing such important advantages to France — had been 
presented at an early period of the session, and had been pressed by the min- 
istry, that they would have failed in the attempt ? At all events, it Avas their 
imperative duty to pursue this course. The aspect of the poUtical horizon in 
Europe was still lowering. There was still imminent danger of a general 
war. France was still in a position to make her dread any serious misunder- 
standing with the United States. 

After all this, on the 26th March, the Duke de Broglie, in a note to Mr. 
Niles, our charge d'affaires at Paris, stated that it was " a source of regret, 
and, indeed, of astonishment, that the Government of the United States did 
not think proper to have an understanding with that of France, before taking 
this step." What step ? The demand of an honest debt, almost two months 
after it had been due, under a solemn treaty. Indeed, the duke, judging 
from the tone of his note, appears almost to have considered the demand an 
insult. To make a positive engagement to pay a fixed sum on a particular 
day, and when that sum is demanded nearly two months after, to express 
astonishment to the creditor, would, in private life, be considered trifling and 
evasive. 

The excuse made by the French ministry for their conduct is altogether 
vain. Had they dreaded the vote of the Chambers — had they been afraid 
to appear before them with their treaty and their bill, they would, and 
they ought to have communicated their apprehensions to this Government, 
and asked it to suspend the demand of the money. But they had never 
whispered such a suspicion, after the exchange of their ratifications of 
the treaty ; and the first intimation of it on this side of the Atlantic, was 
accompanied by the astounding fact that the French government had dis- 
honored our bill. It is true, that before the treaty was signed, they had 
expressed some apprehensions to Mr. Rives on this subject. These, it would 
seem, from their subsequent conduct, were merely diplomatic, and intended 



250 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

to produce delay ; because, from the date of the treaty, on the 4th July, 1831, 
until after our bill of exchange was dishonored in March, 1833, no intimation 
of danger from that quarter was ever suggested. These circumstances made 
a great noise throughout Europe, and soon became the subject of general 
remark. 

On the 6th of April, 1833, a year and more than two months after the 
exchange of the ratifications at Washington, the treaty and bill were first 
presented to the French Chambers. The session closed on the 25th of April, 
without any further action on the subject. No attempt was made by the 
ministry to press it ; and as the session would terminate so soon, perhaps no 
attempt ought to have been made. But, as a new session was to commence 
the day after the termination of the old, and to continue two months, a 
favorable opportunity Avas thus presented to urge the passage of the law upon 
the Chambers. Was this done ? No, sir. The ministry still continued to 
pursue the same course. They suffered the remainder of the month of April 
to pass, the month of May to pass, and not until the eleventh of June, only 
fifteen days before the close of the session, did they again present the bill to 
carry into effect the treaty. It was referred to a committee, of which Mr. 
Benjamin Delessert was the chairman. On the 18th of June, he made a 
report. This report contains a severe reprimand of the French government 
for not having presented the bill at an earlier period of the session ; and ex- 
presses the hope that the treaty may be communicated at the opening of 
the next session. If we are to judge of the opinion of the Chamber from the 
tone and character of this report, instead of being hostile to the execution of 
the treaty, had it been presented to them in proper time, they felt every dis- 
position to regard it in a favorable light. I shall read the whole report— it is 
very short, and is as follows : 

"Gentlemen: The committee charged by you, to examine the bill relative 
to the treaty, concluded on the 4th of July, 1831, between France and the 
United States, has demanded a number of documents and reports, which must 
be examined, in order to obtain a complete knowledge of so important a 
transaction. 

"The committee was soon convinced that a conscientious examination of 
these papers would require much time ; and that, at so advanced a period of 
the session, its labors would have no definitive result. It regrets that, from 
motives which the government only can explain, the bill was not presented 
earher to the Chamber for discussion. It regrets this so much the more as it 
is convinced of the importance of the treaty, which essentially interests our 
maritime commerce, our agriculture, and our manufactures. 

" Several chambers of commerce, particularly those of Paris and Lyons, 
have manifested an ardent desire that the business should be speedily termi- 
nated. 

" The committee would be satisfied if, after a deeper study of the ques- 
tion, it could enlighten the Chamber with regard to the justice of the claims 
alleged by each of the parties to the treaty, and which form the basis of it; 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 251 

but as time does not allow a definiiive report to be made on the subject, it con- 
siders itself as the organ of the Chamber, in expressing the wish that this 
treaty be communicated, at the opening of the next session ; and that its 
result may be such as to strengthen the bonds ot friendship, which must 
ever exist between two nations so long united by common interest and 
sympathy." 

After a careful review of this whole transaction, I am convinced that the 
government of France never would have pursued such a course towards us, 
had they entertained a just sense of our power, and our willingness to exert 
it in behalf of our injured fellow-citizens. Had Russia or Austria been her 
creditors, instead of ourselves, the debt would have been paid when it be- 
came due; or, at the least, the ministers of the king would have exerted 
themselves, in a far different manner, to obtain the necessary appropriation 
from the Chambers. I am again constrained, however reluctantly, to adopt 
the opinion which I had formed at the moment. Our fierce political strife in 
this country is not understood in Europe; and least of all, perhaps, in France. 
During the autumn of 1832, and the session of 1832-3, it was believed abroad 
that we were on the very eve of a revolution ; that our glorious Union was 
at the point of dissolution. I speak, sir, from actual knowledge. Whilst tlie 
advocates of despotism were looking forward, with eager hope, to see the last 
free republic blotted out from the face of nations, the friends of freedom 
throughout the world were disheartened, and dreaded the result of our exper- 
iment. The storm did rage in this country with the utmost violence. It is 
no wonder that those friends of liberty, on the other side of the Atlantic, who 
did not know how to appreciate the recuperative energies of a free and en- 
lightened people, governed by Federal and State institutions of their own 
choice, should have been alarmed for the safety of the Republic. For myself 
I can say that I never felt any serious apprehension ; yet the thrill of delight 
with which I received the news of the passage of the famous compromise 
law of March, 1833, can never be effaced from my memory. I did not then 
stop to inquire into the nature of its provisions. It was enough for me to 
know that the Republic was safe, not only in my own opinion, but in the 
opinion of the world. 

Suppose, sir, that the President of the United States, under similar circum- 
stances, had withheld a treaty from Congress requiring an appropriation, for 
fourteen months after it had been duly ratified, and had thus forfeited the na- 
tional faith to a foreign government, what would have been the consequence? 
Sir, he ought to have been, he would have been impeached. No circum- 
stances could ever have justified such conduct in the eyes of the American 
Congress or the American people. 

After all the provocation which the President had received, as the repre- 
sentative of his country, what was his conduct? It might have been sup- 
posed that this violent man, as the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Southard) 
has designated him, would at once have recommended decisive measures. 
Judging from his energy, — from his well-known devotion to the interests of 



252 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN, 

his country, — and above all, from bis famous declaration to ask nothing from 
foreign nations but what was right, and to submit to nothing wrong, I 
should have expected from him an indignant message at the commencement 
of the next session of Congress. Instead of that, the message of December. 
1833 in relation to French affairs, is of the mildest character. It breathes a 
spirit of confident hope that our ancient ally would do us justice during the 
next session of the Chambers. His exposition of the subject is concluded by 
the following declaration : 

" As this subject involves important interests, and has attracted a consid- 
erable share of the public attention, I have deemed it proper to make this 
explicit statement of its actual condition ; and should I be disappointed in the 
hope now entertained, the subject will be again brought to the notice of Con- 
gress in such a manner as the occasion may require." 

And thus ends the first act of this astonishing historical drama. Through- 
out the whole of it, beginning, middle and end, the French government, and 
not the French Chambers, were exclusively to blame. 

We have now arrived at the mission of Mr. Livingston. He reached 
Paris in September, 1833. The Due de Broglie assured him " that the king's 
government would williugly and without hesitation promise to direct the de- 
liberations of the Chambers to the projet de hi relative to the execution of 
the convention of July 4, 1831, on the day after the Chamber is constituted, 
and to employ every means to secure the happy conclusion of an affair, the 
final determination of which the United States cannot desire more ar- 
dently than ourselves." After this assurance, and after all that had passed, it 
was confidently expected that the king would, in strong terms, have recom- 
mended the adoption of the appropriation by the Chambers. In this we were 
again doomed to disappointment. In his opening speech he made no direct 
allusion to the subject. He simply says, that, " the financial laws, and those 
required for the execution of treaties, will be presented to you." 

The bill was presented, and debated, and finally rejected by the Chamber 
of Deputies on the 1st day of April, 1834, by a vote of 176 to 168. It is not 
my present purpose to dwell upon the causes of this rejection. No doubt the 
principal one was that the French ministers were surrounded near the conclu- 
sion of the debate, and were unable at the moment to show that the captures, 
at St. Sebastians were not included in our treaty with Spain. I am sorry 
they were not better prepared upon this point ; but I attribute to them no 
blame on that account. 

It has been urged over and over again, both on this floor and elsewhere, 
that the rejection of the treaty was occasioned by the publication in this 
country of Mr. Eives's letter to Mr. Livingston of the 8th of July, 1831. Is 
this the fact ? If it be so it ought to be known to the world. If it be not, 
both the character of this Government and of Mr. Rives should be rescued 
from the imputation. What is the opinion expressed in this letter ? Is it that 
the American claimants would obtain, under the treaty, more than the amount 
of their just claims? No such thing. Is it that they would obtain the 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 253 

amount of their just claims with interest? Not even this. The negotiator 
merely expresses the opinion that they would receive every cent of the prin- 
cipal. He does not allege that they would receive one cent of interest for a 
delay of nearly a quarter of a century. This opinion is evidently founded 
upon that expressed by Mr. Gallatin in a despatch dated on the 14th Janu- 
ary, 1822, cited by Mr. Rives, in which the former expresses his beUef that 
five millions of dollars would satisfy all our just claims. It ought to be ob- 
served that the sum stipulated to be paid by the treaty is only 25,000,000 of 
francs, or about $4,700,000 ; and that more than nine years had elapsed be- 
tween the date of Mr. Gallatin's despatch and the signing of the treaty. 
These facts all appear on the face of the letter, with the additional fact that 
tlie statements of the claimants, which have from time to time been pre- 
sented to Congress, carry the amount of the claims much higher. These 
statements, however, Mr. Rives did not believe were a safe guide. 

This is the amount of the letter, when fairly analyzed, which, it is alleged, 
destroyed the treaty before the French Chambers. If a copy of it had been 
placed in the hands of every Deputy, it could not possibly have produced any 
such effect. 

That it did not occasion the rejection of the treaty is absolutely certain. I 
have examined the whole debate for the purpose of discovering any allusion 
to this letter ; but I have examined it in vain. Not the slightest trace of the 
letter can be detected in any of the numerous speeches delivered on that 
occasion. The topics of opposition were various, and several of them of a 
strange character ; but the letter is not even once alluded to throughout the 
whole debate. If its existence were known at the time in the French 
Chamber, this letter, written by a minister to his own government, expressing 
a favorable opinion of the result of his own negotiations, was a document of 
a character so natural, so much to be expected, that not one Deputy in oppo- 
sition to the treaty believed it to be of sufficient importance even to merit a 
passing notice. Still, I have often thought it strange it had never been men- 
tioned in the debate. The mystery is now resolved. The truth is, this letter, 
which is alleged to have produced such fatal effects, was entirely unknown to 
the members of the French Chamber when they rejected the treaty. This 
fact is well established by a letter from Mr. Jay, the chairman of the com- 
mittee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to investigate our claims, ad- 
dressed to Mr. Gibbes, and dated at Paris on the 24th January, 1835. I shall 
read it. 

{Extract of a letter from Mr. Jay to Mr. Gihhes, dated 2ith January, 1835.) 
— '' It is asserted in the American prints that the rejection of the American 
treaty by the Chamber of Deputies, at their last session, was chiefly owing 
to the publication of a letter from Mr. Rives to his own Government. This 
is an error, which justice to that distinguished statesman, and a sense of his 
unremitting exertions to promote the interests of his Government while here, 
induce me formally to contradict. No such evidence appears in the debates ; 
and in none of my conversations with the members have I heard his letter 



254 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

alleged as the motive for disputing the amount due. I much question, in- 
deed, if any other Deputy than myself ever read the letter alluded to." 

We have now arrived at that point of time when a majority of the French 
Chambers arrayed themselves against the treaty. This decision was made on 
the 1st April, 1834. Some apprehensions then prevailed among the king and 
his ministers. The business was now becoming serious. New assurances 
had now become necessary to prevent the President from presenting the whole 
transaction to Congress, which they knew would still be in session, when the 
information of the rejection would reach the United States. In his annual 
message, at the commencement of the session, it will be recollected, he had 
declared that should he be disappointed in the hope then entertained, he 
would again bring the subject before Congress, in such a manner as the occa- 
sion might require. They knew that he was a man who performed his prom- 
ises, and a great effort was to be made to induce hira to change his purpose. 

Accordingly a French brig of war, the Cuirassier, is fitted out with des- 
patches to Mr. Serrurier. They reached him on the 3d June. On the 4th, he 
has an interview with Mr. McLane, and makes explanations which the latter 
very properly requests may be reduced to writing. In compliance with this 
request, the French minister, on the 5th, addresses a note to Mr. McLane. 
After expressing the regrets of the French government at the rejection of the 
bill, he uses the following language : " The king's government, sir, after this 
rejection, the object of so much painful disappointment to both governments, 
has deliberated, and its unanimous determination has been to make an appeal 
from the first vote of the present Chamber to the next Chamber, and to 
appear before the next legislature with its treaty and its bill in hand. 

" It flatters itself that the light already thrown upon this serious question, 
during these first debates, and the expression of the public wishes becoming 
each day more clear and distinct, and, finally, a more mature examination, 
will have, in the mean time, modified the minds of persons, and that its own 
conviction will become the conviction of the Chambers. The king's govern- 
ment, sir, will make every loyal and constitutional effort to that effect, and 
will do all that its persevering persuasion of the justice and of the mutual ad- 
vantages of the treaty authorizes you to expect from it. Its intention, more- 
over, is to do all that our constitution allows, to hasten, as much as possible, 
the period of the new presentation of the rejected law. 

" Such, sir, are the sentiments, such the intentions of his majesty's govern- 
ment. I think I may rely that, on its part, the Government of the EepubUc 
will avoid, with foreseeing solicitude, in this transitory state of things, all 
that might become a fresh cause of irritation between the two countries, 
compromit the treaty, and raise up an obstacle perhaps insurmountable, to 
the views of reconciliation and harmony which animate the king's council." 

Now, sir, examine this letter, even without any reference to the answer 
of Mr. McLane, and can there be a doubt as to its true construction ? It 
was not merely the disposition, but "it was the intention of the king's gov- 
ernment to do all that their constitution allows ; to hasten, as much as pos- 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 255 

sible, the period of the new presentation of the rejected law." The President 
knew that under the constitution of France the king could at any time con- 
voke the Chambers upon three weeks' notice. It was in his power, therefore, 
to present this law to the Chambers whenever he thought proper. The 
promise was to hasten this presentation as much as possible. Without any- 
thing further the President had a right confidently to expect that the Cham- 
bers would be convoked in season to enable him to present their decision to 
tlie Congress of the United States in his next annual message. The assurance 
was made on the 5th June, and Congress did not assemble until the beginning 
of December. But the letter of Mr. McLane, of the 27th June, removes all 
possible doubt from this subject. He informs Mr. Serrurier that " the Presi- 
dent is still unable to understand the causes which led to the result of the 
proceeding in the Chamber, especially when he recollected the assurances 
which had so often been made by the king and his ministers, of their earnest 
desire to carry the convention into effect, and the support which the Cham- 
ber had afforded in all the other measures proposed by the king." And 
again : 

" The assurances which M. Serrurier's letter contains, of the adherence of 
the king's government to the treaty, of its unanimous determination to appeal 
from the decision of the present to the new Chamber, and its conviction that 
the public wish, and a mature examination of the subject, will lead to a favor- 
able result, and its intention to make every constitutional effort to that effect, 
and finally, its intention to do all that the constitution allows to hasten the 
presentation of the new law, have been fully considered by the President. 

" Though fully sensible of the high responsibility which he owes to the 
American people, in a matter touching so nearly the national honor, the 
President, still trusting to the good faith and justice of France, willing to 
manifest a spirit of forbearance so long as it may be consistent with the rights 
and dignity of his country, and truly desiring to preserve those relations of 
friendship, which, commencing in our struggle for independence, form the 
true pohcy of both nations, and sincerely respecting the king's wishes, will 
rely upon the assurances which M. Serrurier has been instructed to offer, 
and will therefore await with confidence the promised appeal to the new 
Chamber. 

" The President, in desiring the undersigned to request that his sentiments 
on this subject may be made known to his majesty's government, has in- 
structed him also to state his expectation that the king, seeing the great 
interests now involved in the subject, and the deep solicitude felt by the 
people of the United States respecting it, Avill enable liim, when presenting 
the subject to Congress, as his duty will require him to do at the opening of 
their next session, to announce at that time the result of that appeal, and of 
his majesty's efforts for its success." 

Had this letter of Mr. McLane placed a different construction upon the 
engagement of the French government from that which Mr. Serrurier in- 
tended to communicate, it was hi^ duty to make the necessary explanations 



256 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

without delay. He, in that case, -would have done so instantly. It was a 
subject of too much importance to suller any misapprehension to exist con- 
cerning it for a single moment. 

Notwithstanding all which had passed, the President, on the fiiith of these 
assurances of the French government, suftored Congress to adjourn without 
presenting the subject to their view. This rash, this violent man, instigated 
by his own good feelings towards our ancient ally, and by his love of peace, 
determines that he would try them once more, that he once more would 
extend the ohve branch before presenting to Congress and the nation a history 
of our wrongs. I confess I do not approve of tliis policy. I think the time 
had then arrived to manifest to France some sensibility on our part on 
account of her delay in executing the treaty. I believe that such a course 
would have been dictated by sound policy. 

What were the consequences of this new manifestation of the kindly 
feelings of the President towards France ? Was it properly appreciated by 
tlie French government ? Was it received in the liberal and friendly spirit 
from which it had proceeded ? Let the sequel answer these questions. I 
shall read you Mr. Livingston's opinion on the subject. In a letter to Mr. 
Forsyth, under date of the 22d November, 1834, he thus expresses himself: 

" I do not hope for any decision on our affairs before the middle of Janu- 
ary. One motive for delay is an expectation that the message of the Presi- 
dent may arrive before the discussion, and tliat it may contain something to 
show a strong national feeling on the subject. Tliis is not mere conjecture: 
I know the fact ; and I repeat now, from a full knowledge of the case, what I 
have more than once stated in my former despatches as my firm persuasion, 
that tlie moderate tone taken by our Government, when the rejection was 
first known, was attributed by some to indifference, or to a conviction on the 
part of the President that he would not be supported in any strong measure 
by the people, and by others to a consciousness tliat the convention had 
given us more than we were entitled to ask." 

I shall now proceed to show in what manner the French government per- 
formed the engagement which had been made by their representative in 
Washington to hasten the presentation of the rejected law as much as pos- 
sible. 

The Chambers met on the 31st July, and the king made them a speech. 
This speech contains no allusion to the subject of the treaty except the fol- 
lowing : " The laws necessary for carrying treaties into effect, and those still 
required for the accomplishment of the promises of the Chamber, will be 
presented to you in the course of this session." The rejected bill was not 
presented. After a session of two weeks, the Chambers were prorogued 
on the 16th August until the 29th December, — a day, almost a month after 
the next meeting of Congress. 

I admit that strong reasons existed for dispensing with that part of the 
obhgation which required the French government to present the bill at this 
short session. No good reason has ever l?een alleged to excuse them for pro- 



SPEECH OX THE FRENCH TREATY. 257 

roguing the Chambers until so late a day as the 29th of December. They 
might have met, and they ought to have met, at an early period of the 
autumn. They have heretofore met, on different occasions, for the despatch of 
business, in every month of the year. It was in vain that Mr. Livingston urged 
tlie necessity of an earlier meeting on the Count de Rigny. It was in vain 
tliat he appealed to the positive engagement of the French government made 
by Mr. Serrurier. It vras in vain that he declared to him, " that the Presi- 
dent could not, at the opening of the next session of Congress, avoid laying 
before that body a statement of the then position of affairs on this interesting 
subject, nor, under any circumstances, permit that session to end, as it must, on 
the third of March, without recommending such measures as he may deem that 
justice and the honor of the country may require." All his remonstrances 
were disregarded. Instead of hastening the presentation of the rejected law 
as much as possible, they refused to assemble the Chambers in time even to 
present the bill before the meeting of Congress. Their meeting was so long 
delayed, as to render it almost impossible that their determination should be 
known in this country before the close of the session, notwithstanding the 
President had agreed not to present the subject to Congress at the previous 
session, under a firm conviction that he would receive this determination in 
time to lay it before them at the commencement of their next session. Is 
there a Senator in this hall, who can believe for a moment, that if the Presi- 
dent had been informed the rejected bill would not be laid before the Cham- 
bers until the 29th December, he would have refrained from communicating 
to Congress, at their previous session, the state of the controversy between 
the two countries ? Upon this construction, the engagement of the French 
government was mere words, without the slightest meaning; and the national 
vessel which brought it in such solemn form, might much better have 
remained at home. 

What was the apology — what was the pretext under which the king's 
government refused to assemble the Cliambers at an earlier period ? It was, 
that Mr, Serrurier had made no engagement to that effect, and that the inten- 
tion which he had expressed in behalf of his government to do all that the 
constitution allows, to hasten, as much as possible, the period of the new 
presentation of the rejected law, meant no more than that this was their dis- 
position. The word "intention" is thus changed into "disposition" by the 
Count de Rigny, and the whole engagement which was presented to the 
President in such an imposing form, was thus converted into a mere unmean- 
ing profession of their desire to hasten this presentation as much as possible. 

Sir, at the commencement of the session of Congress, it became the duty 
of the President to speak, and what could any American expect that he 
would say? The treaty had been violated in the first instance, by the minis- 
ters of the French king, in neglecting to lay it before the Chambers until 
after the first instalment was due. It was then twice submitted, at so late 
a period of the session, that it was impossible for the Chambers to examine 
and decide the question before their adjournment. On the last of these oeca- 
I.— 17 



258 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sions, the chairman of the committee, to which the subject was referred, had 
reported a severe reprimand against the government, for not having sooner 
presented the bill, and expressed a hope that it might be presented at an 
early period of the next session. It was then rejected by the Chamber of 
Deputies ; and when the French government had solemnly engaged to hasten 
the presentation of the rejected law, as soon as their constitution would per- 
mit they prorogue the Chambers to the latest jDeriod which custom sanctions, 
in the very face of the remonstrances of the minister of the United States. I 
ask again, sir, before such an array of circumstances, what could any man, 
what could any American expect the President would say in his message ? 
The cup of forbearance had been drained by him to the very dregs. It was 
then his duty to speak so as to be heard and to be regarded on the other 
side of the Atlantic. If the same spirit which dictated the message, or any- 
thing like it, had been manifested by Congress, the money, in my opinion, 
would ere this have been paid. 

The question was then reduced to a single point. We demanded the 
execution of a solemn treaty ; it had been refused. France had promised 
again to bring the question before the Chambers as soon as possible. The 
Chambers were prorogued until the latest day. The President had every 
reason to believe that France was trifling with us, and that the treaty would 
again be rejected. Is there a Senator, within the sound of my voice, who, 
if France had finally determined not to pay the money, would have tamely 
submitted to this violation of national faith ? Not one 1 

The late war with Great Britain elevated us in the estimation of the whole 
world. In every portion of Europe, we have reason to be proud that we are 
American citizens. We have paid dearly for the exalted character we now 
enjoy among the nations, and we ought to preserve it and transmit it unim- 
paired to future generations. To them it will be a most precious inherit- 
ance. 

If, after having compelled the weaker nations of the world to pay us in- 
demnities for captures made from our citizens, we should cower before 
the power of France, and abandon our rights against her, when they had 
been secured by a solemn treaty, we should be regarded as a mere Hector 
among the nations. The same course which you have pursued towards the 
weak, you must pursue towards the powerful. If you do not, your name 
will become a by- word and a proverb. 

But under all the provocations which the country had received, what is the 
character of that message ? Let it be scanned with eagle eyes, and there is 
nothing in its language at which the most fastidious critic can take offence. 
It contains an enumeration of our wrongs in mild and dignified language, and 
a contingent recommendation of reprisals, in case the indemnity should agam 
be rejected by the Cliambers. But in this, and in all other respects, it defers 
entirely to the judgment of Congress. Every idea of an intended menace is 
excluded by the President's express declaration. He says: "Such a 
measure ought not to be considered by France as a menace. Her pride and 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 359 

power are too well known to expect any thing from her fears, and preclude 
the necessity of the declaration, that nothing partaking of the character of 
intimidation is intended by us." 

I ask again, is it not forbearing in its language ? Is there a single state- 
ment in it not founded upon truth ? Does it even state the whole truth 
against France ? Are there not strong points omitted ? All these questions 
must be answered in the affirmative. On this subject we have strong evi- 
dence from the Duke de Broglie himself. In his famous letter to Mr. Pageot 
of June 17th, 1835,— the arrow of the Parthian as he flew,— this fact is ad- 
mitted. He says : 

" If we examine in detail the message of the President of the United 
States, (I mean that part of it which concerns the relations between the 
United States and France,) it will possibly be found, that passing successively 
from phrase to phrase, none will be met that cannot bear an interpretation 
more or less plausible, nor of which, strictly speaking, it cannot be said that 
it is a simple expose of such a fact, true in itself, or the assertion of such or 
such a right which no one contests, or the performance of such or such an 
obligation imposed on the President by the very nature of his functions. 
There will certainly be found several in which the idea of impeaching the 
good faith of the French government, or of acting upon it through menace or 
intimidation, is more or less disavowed." 

It was the whole message, and not any of the detached parts, at which the 
French government chose to take offence. 

It is not my present purpose to discuss the propriety of the recommenda- 
tion of reprisals, or whether that was the best mode of redress which could 
have been suggested. Some decided recommendation, however, was required 
from the executive, both by pubUc opinion and by the wrongs which we had 
so long patiently endured. 

Who can suppose that the executive intended to menace France, or to ob- 
tain from her fears what would be denied by her sense of justice ? The 
President, in this very message, expressly disclaims such an idea. Her his- 
tory places her far above any such imputation. The wonder is, how she could 
have ever supposed the President, against his own solemn declaration, in- 
tended to do her any such injustice. She ought to have considered it as it 
was, a mere executive recommendation to Congress, not intended for her at 
all— not to operate upon her fears, but upon their deliberations in deciding 
whether any and what measures should be adopted to secure the execution 
of the treaty. But on this subject I shall say more hereafter. 

We have now arrived at the special message of the President to Congress 
of the 26th February last ; a document which has a most important bearing 
on the appropriation of the three millions which was rejected by the Sen- 
ate. I have given this historical sketch of our controversy with France, 
for the purpose of bringing Senators to the very point of time, and to the 
precise condition of this question, when the Senate negatived that appropria- 
tion. 



260 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

What had Congress done in relation to the French question when this 
message was presented to us? Nothing, sir, nothing. The Senate had 
unanimously passed a resolution on the 15th January, that it was inexpedient, 
at present, to adopt any legi^jlative measure, in regard to the state of affairs 
between the United States and France. This unanimity was obtained by 
two considerations. The one was, that the Frencli Chambers had been con- 
vened, though not for the purpose of acting upon our treaty, on the first, in- 
stead of the twenty-ninth of December, a fact unknown to the President at 
the date of his message. The other, that this circumstance afforded a reason- 
able ground of hope, that we might learn their final determination before the 
close of our session on the 3d March. But whatever may have been the 
causes, the Senate had determined that, for the present, nothing should be 
done. 

In the House of Representatives, at the date of the special message, on 
the 26th February, no measure whatever had been adopted. The President 
had just cause to believe that the sentiments contained in his message to Con- 
gress, at the commencement of their session, were not in unison with the 
feelings of either branch of the legislature. He therefore determined to lay 
all the information in his possession before Congress, and leave it for them 
to decide whether any or what measures should be adopted for the defence 
of the country. I shall read this message. It is as follows : 

" I transmit to Congress a report from the Secretary of State, with copies 
of all the letters received from Mr. Livingston since the message to the 
House of Representatives of the 6th instant, of the instructions given to that 
minister, and of all the late correspondence with the French government in 
Paris, or in Washington, except a note of Mr. Serrurier, which, for the rea- 
sons stated in the report, is not now communicated. 

" It will be seen that I have deemed it my duty to instruct Mr. Livingston 
to quit France with his legation, and return to the United States, if an appro- 
priation for the fulfilment of the convention shall be refused by the Cham- 
bers. 

" The subject being now, in all its present aspects, before Congress, whose 
right it is to decide what measures are to be pursued on that event, I 
deem it unnecessary to make further recommendation, being confident that, 
on their part, every thing will be done to maintain the rights and honor of 
the country which the occasion requires." 

The President leaves the whole question to Congress. What was the in- 
formation then communicated ? That a very high state of excitement existed 
against us in France. That the French minister had been recalled from this 
country; an act which is generally the immediate precursor of hostilities be- 
tween nations. Besides, Mr. Livingston, who was a competent judge and on 
the spot, with the best means of knowledge, informed his Government that 
he would not be surprised, should the law be rejected, if they anticipated our 
reprisals, by the seizure of our vessels in port, or the attack of our ships in 
the Mediterranean, by a superior force. Such were his apprehensions, upon 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 261 

this subject, that he felt it to be his duty, without delay, to inform Commodore 
Patterson of the state of things, so that he might be upon his guard. 

Ought these apprehensions of Mr. Livingston to have been disregarded ? 
Let the history of that gallant people answer this question. How often has 
the injustice of their cause been concealed from their own view by the daz- 
zling brilUancy of some grand and striking exploit? Glory is their passion, 
and their great emperor, who knew them best, often acted upon this princi- 
ple. To anticipate their enemy, and commence the war Avith some bold 
stroke, would be in perfect accordance with their character. 

Every Senator, when he voted upon the appropriation, must have known, 
or at least might have known, all the information which was contained in the 
documents accompanying the President's message. 

It has been objected, that if the President desired this appropriation of 
three millions, he ought to have recommended it in his message. I protest 
against this principle. He acted wisely, discreetly, and with a becoming re- 
spect for Congress, to leave the Avhole question to their decision. This was 
especially proper, as we had not thought proper to adopt any measure in re- 
lation to the subject. 

Suppose the President had, in his special message, recommended this ap- 
propriation, what would have been said, and justly said, upon the subject? 
Denunciations the most eloquent would have resounded against him through- 
out the whole country, from Georgia to Maine. It would have everywhere 
been proclaimed as an act of executive dictation. In our then existing rela- 
tions with France, it would have been said, and said with much force, that 
such a recommendation from the executive might have had a tendency to ex- 
asperate her people, and produce war. Besides, I shall never consent to adopt 
the principle that we ought to take no measures to defend the country, with- 
out the recommendation of the executive. This would be to submit to that 
very dictation, against which, on other occasions, gentlemen themselves have 
so loudly protested. No, sir, I shall always assert the perfect right of Congress 
to act upon such subjects, independently of any executive recommendation. 

This special message was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
in the House of Representatives, on the 26th February. On the next day 
they reported three resolutions, one of which was, " that contingent prepara- 
tion ought to be made, to meet any emergency growing out of our relations 
with France." The session was rapidly drawing to a close. But a few days 
of it then remained. It would have been vain to act upon this resolution. It 
was a mere abstraction. Had it been adopted, it could have produced no 
effect ; the money was wanted to place the country in a state of defence, and 
not a mere opinion that it ought to be granted. The chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, therefore, on the 28th February, had this resolu- 
tion laid upon the table, and gave notice that he would move an amendment 
to the fortification bill, appropriating three milhons of dollars, one million to 
the army, and two millions to the navy, to provide for the contingent defence 
of the country. 



263 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

It has been urged, that because the President, in his last annual message 
has said that this contingent appropriation was inserted according to his 
views, that some blame attaches to him from the mode of its introduction. 
Without pretending to know the fact, I will venture the assertion, that he 
never requested any member, either of this or the other branch of the le"-is- 
lature, to make such a motion. He had taken his stand — he had left the 
whole subject to Congress. From this he never departed. If the chairman 
of any committee, or any other member of the Senate or the House, called 
upon him to know his views upon the subject, he no doubt communicated 
them freely and frankly. This is his nature. Surely no blame can attach 
to him for having expressed his opinion upon this subject to any mem- 
ber Avho might ask it. It has been the uniform course pursued on such 
occasions. 

On the 2d of March, the House of Representatives, by a unanimous vote, 
resolved that, in their opinion, the treaty with France, of the 4th July, 1831, 
should be maintained, and its execution insisted on. This was no party vote. 
It was dictated by a common American feeling, which rose superior to party. 
After this solemn declaration of the House, made in the face of the world, how 
could it be supposed they would adjourn, without endeavoring to place the 
country in an attitude of defence ? What, sir ! Tlie representatives of the 
people, with an overflowing treasury, to leave the country naked and ex- 
posed to hostile invasion, and to make no provision for our navy, after having 
declared unanimously that the treaty should be maintained ! Who could 
have supposed it? 

On the 3d of March, upon the motion of the chairman of the Committee 
on Foreign Relations (Mr. Cambreleng) and in pursuance of the notice 
■which he had given on the 28th of February, this appropriation of three 
millions was annexed as an amendment to the fortification bill. The vote 
upon the question was 109 in the affirmative, and 77 in the negative. This 
vote, although not unanimous, hke the former, was no party vote. The bill, 
thus amended, was brought to the Senate. Now, sir, let me ask, if this 
appropriation had proceeded from the House alone, without any message or 
any suggestion from the executive, would this not have been a legitimate 
source ? Ought such an appropriation to be opposed in the Senate, because it 
had not received executive sanction? Have the Representatives of the 
people no right to originate a bill for the defence and security of their con- 
stituents and their country, without first consulting the will of the President? 
For one, I shall never submit to any such a slavish principle. It would make 
the Executive every thing, and Congress nothing. 

Had the indemnity been absolutely rejected by the Chambers, the two na- 
tions would have been placed in a state of defiance towards each other. In 
such a condition it was the right — nay, more, it was the imperative duty of 
the House of Representatives to make contingent preparation for the worst. 
The urgency of the case was still more striking, because in ten or eleven of 
the States Representatives could not be elected until months after the adjourn- 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 263 

ment and, therefore, Congress could not have been assembled to meet any- 
emergency which might occur. 

But, sir, does it require a recommendation of the Executive, or a vote of 
the House of Representatives, to originate such an appropriation ? Any in- 
dividual Senator or member of the House may do it with the strictest pro- 
priety. Did the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) ask the approbation 
of the President, before he made the motion at the last session, which does 
him so much honor, to increase the appropriation for fortifications half a 
million? How did the amendments proposed by the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts (Mr. Webster) to the fortification bill of the last session originate? 
I presume from the Committee of Finance, of which he was the chairman. 
No doubt he conferred with the head of the proper Executive Department, 
according to the custom in such cases ; but still these appropriations of more 
than four hundred thousand dollars had their origin in that committee. It 
was a proper, a legitimate source. Is then the ancient practice to be 
changed, and must it become a standing rule that we are to appropriate no 
money without the orders or the expressed wish of the Executive ? I trust not. 

Tlie form of this appropriation has been objected to. I shall read it. 

" And be it farther enacted, That the sum of three millions of dollars be, 
and the same is hereby, appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not 
otherwise appropriated, to be expended, in whole or in part, under the direc- 
tion of the President of the United States, for the military and naval service, 
including fortifications and ordnance, and increase of the navy ; Provided, 
such expenditures shall be rendered necessary, for the defence of the country, 
prior to the next meeting of Congress." 

It has been urged that to grant money in such general terms would have 
been a violation of the Constitution. I do not understand that the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), at the present session, has distinctly placed 
it upon this ground. Other Senators have done so in the strongest terms. 
Is there any thing in the Constitution which touches the question? It 
simply declares that "no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in 
consequence of appropriations made by law." Whether these appropriations 
shall be general or specific, is left entirely, as it ought to have been, to the 
discretion of Congress. I admit that, ex vi termini, an appropriation of 
money must have a reference to some object. But whether you refer to a 
class, or to an individual, to the genus or to the species, your appropriation is 
equally constitutional. The degree of specification necessary to make the law 
valid never can become a constitutional question. The terms of the instrument 
are as broad and as general as the English language can make them. In this 
particular, as in almost every other, the framers of the Constitution have 
manifested their wisdom and their foresight. Cases may occur and have 
occurred in the history of this Government, demanding the strictest secrecy ; 
cases in which to specify, would be to defeat the very object of the appro- 
priation. A remarkable example of this kind occurs in the administration of 
Mr. Jefierson, to which I shall presently advert. 



264 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

There are other cases in which from the very nature of things you cannot 
specify the objects of an appropriation without the gift of prophecy. I take 
the present to be a clear case of this description. The appropriation was 
contingent; it was to be for the defence of the country. How then could it 
have been specific? How could you foresee when, or Avhere, or how the 
attack of France would be made ? Without this foreknowledge, you could 
not designate when, or where, or how it would become necessary to use the 
money. This must depend upon France, not upon ourselves. She might be 
disposed to confine the contest merely to a naval war. In that event it 
would become necessary to apply the whole sum to secure us against naval 
attacks. She might threaten to invade Louisiana or any other portion of the 
Union. The money would then be required to call out the militia, and to 
march them and the regular army to that point. Every thing must depend 
upon the movements of the enemy. It might become necessary, in order 
most effectually to resist the contemplated attack, to construct steam frigates 
or steam batteries, or it might be deemed more proper to increase your or- 
dinary navy and complete and arm your fortifications. In a country where 
Congress cannot be always in session, you must in times of danger, grant 
some discretionary powers to the Executive. This should always be avoided 
when it is possible, consistently with the safety of the country. But it was 
wise, it was prudent in the framers of the Constitution, in order to meet such 
cases, to declare in general terms that "no money shall be drawn from the 
Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by Liav." Not specific 
appropriations. The terms are general and unrestricted. If the amendment 
had appropriated one million to fortifications, the second million to the in- 
crease of the navy, and the third to the purchase of ordnance and arms, it 
might have been found that a great deal too much had been appropriated to 
one object, and a gi-eat deal loo little to another. 

As a matter of expediency, as a means of limiting the discretion of execu- 
tive officers, I am decidedly friendly to specific appropriations, Avhenever they 
can be made. I so declared in the debate at the last session. I then ex- 
pressed a wish that this appropriation had been more specific; but upon 
reflection, I do not see how it could have been made much more so, unless 
we had possessed the gift of prophecy. But the Constitution has nothing to 
do with the question. 

After all, I attached more value to specific appropriations before I had 
examined this subject, than I do at the present moment. Still I admit their 
importance. The clause which immediately follows in the Constitution, is 
the true touchstone of responsibility. Although the appropriation may be 
general ; yet " a regular statement and account of the receipts and expendi- 
tures of all public money shall be published from time to time." No matter 
in what language public money may be granted to the Executive, in its 
expenditure, he is but the mere trustee of the American people, and he must 
produce to them his vouchers for every cent entrusted to his care. This 
constitutional provision holds him to a strict responsibility, to a responsibility 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 265 

much more severe than if Congress had been required in all cases to make 
specific appropriations. 

How Senators can create a dictator, and give him unhmited power over 
the purse and the sword out of such an appropriation, I am at a loss to con- 
ceive. It is a flight of imagination beyond my reach. What, sir, to appro- 
priate three millions for the military and naval defence of the country in case 
it should become necessary during the recess of Congress, and at its nest 
meeting to compel the President to account for the whole sum he may have 
expended ; is this to create a dictator ? Is this to surrender our liberties 
into the hands of one man ? And yet gentlemen have contended for tliis 
proposition. 

What has been the practice of the Government in regard to this subject ? 
During the period of our first two Presidents, appropriations were made in 
the most general terms. No one then imagined that this was a violation of 
tlie Constitution. When Mr. Jefferson came into power, this practice was 
changed. In his message to Congress, of December 8th, 1801, he says : 
" In our care too of the pubhc contributions entrusted to our discretion, it 
would be prudent to multiply barriers against their dissipation, by appropriat- 
ino- specific sums to every specific purpose susceptible of definition.'^ Sus- 
ceptible of definition. Here is the rule, and here is the exception. He treats 
the subject not as a constitutional question, but as one of mere expediency. 
In little more than two short years after this recommendation, Air. Jefferson 
found it was necessary to obtain an appropriation from Congress in the most 
general terms. To have made it specific, would necessarily have defeated its 
very object. Secrecy was necessary to success. Accordingly on the 26th 
February, 1803, Congress made the most extraordinary appropriation in our 
annals. They granted to the President the sum of two millions of dollars, 
" for the purpose of defraying any extraordinary expenses which may be in- 
curred in the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations." 
Here, sir, was a grant almost without any Umit. It was co-extensive with 
the whole world. Every nation on the face of the earth was within the 
sphere of its operation. The President might have used this money to sub- 
sidize foreign nations to destroy our liberties. That he was utterly incapable 
of such conduct it is scarcely necessary to observe. I do not know that I 
should have voted for such an unlimited grant. Still, however, there was a 
responsibility to be found in his obligation under the Constitution to account 
for its expenditure. Mr. Jefferson never used any part of tliis appropriation. 
It had been intended for the purchase of the sovereignty of New Orleans 
and of other possessions in that quarter ; but our treaty with France of the 
30th April, 1803, by which Louisiana was ceded to us, rendered it unneces- 
sary for him to draw any part of this money from the Treasury, under the 
act of Congress, by which it had been granted. 

Before the close of Mr. Jefferson's second term, it was found that specific 
appropriations in the extent to which they had been carried, had become in- 
convenient. Congress often granted too much for one object, and too little 



366 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

for another. This must necessarily be the case, because we cannot say 
beforehand precisely how much shall be required for any one purpose. On 
the 3d of March, 1809, an act was passed, which was approved by Mr. 
Jeflferson, containing the following provision: 

" Provided, nevertheless, That, during the recess of Congress, the President 
of the United States may, and he is hereby authorized, on the application of 
the Secretary of the proper department, and not otherwise, to direct, if in his 
opinion necessary for the public service, that a portion of the moneys appro- 
priated for a particular branch of expenditure in that department, be apphed 
to another branch of expenditure in the same department ; in which case, a 
special account of ths moneys thus transferred, and of their application, shall 
be laid before Congress during the first week of their next ensuing session." 

Is this act constitutional ? If it be so, there is an end of the question. 
Has its constitutionality ever been doubted ? It authorizes the President to 
take the money appropriated by Congress for one special object and apply it 
to another. The money destined for any one purpose by an appropriation 
bill, may be diverted from that purpose by the President, and be applied to 
any other purpose entirely different, with no limitation whatever upon his 
discretion, except that money to be expended by one of the Departments, 
either of War, or of the Navy, or of the Treasury, could not be transferred 
to another Department. 

It is not my intention to cite all the precedents bearing upon this question. 
I shall merely advert to one other. On the 10th of March, 1812, Congress 
appropriated five hundred thousand dollars '• for the purpose of fortifying and 
defending the maritime frontier of the United States." This was in anticipa- 
tion of the late war with Great Britain, and is as general in its terms, and 
leaves as much to executive discretion, as the proposed appropriation of three 
millions. 

I trust, then, that I have established the positions that this appropriation 
originated from a legitimate source — was necessary for the defence and honor 
of the country, and violated no provision of the constitution. If so, it ought 
to have received the approbation of the Senate. 

When the fortification bill came back to the Senate, with this appropriation 
attached to it by the House, the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), 
instantly moved that it should be rejected. I feel no disposition to make any 
harsh observations in relation to that gentleman. I think, however, that his 
remark, that if the enemy had been thundering at the gates of the capitol, he 
would have moved to reject the appropriation, was a most unfortunate one for 
himself. I consider it nothing more than a bold figure of speech. I feel the 
most perfect confidence that the gentleman is now willing to vote all the 
money which may be necessary for the defence of the country. 

Of the gentleman's sincerity in opposing this appropriation, I did not then, 
nor do I now entertain a doubt. He was ardent and impassioned in his 
manner, and was evidently in a state of highly excited feeUng. Probably 
strong political prejudices may have influenced his judgment without his 



I 



i 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 267 

knowledge. He thought that a high constitutional question was involved in 
the amendment, and acted accordingly. 

When the bill returned again to the Senate, after we bad rejected, and the 
House had insisted upon their amendment, the Senator immediately moved 
that we should adhere to our rejection. I well recollect, sir, that you (Mr. 
King, of Alabama, was in the chair), remarked at the time, that this was a 
harsh motion, and should it prevail, would be well calculated to exasperate 
the feelings of the House, and to defeat the bill. You then observed that the 
proper motion would be to insist upon our rejection, and ask a conference ; 
and that the motion to adhere ought not to be resorted to until all gentler 
measures had failed. 

The Senator now claims the merit, and is anxious to sustain the responsi- 
bility, of having moved to reject tliis appropriation. He also asks, in mercy, 
that when the expunging process shall commence, his vote, upon this occasion, 
may be spared from its operation. 

For the sake of my country, and in undisguised sincerity of purpose, T 
declare, for the sake of the gentleman, I am rejoiced that the responsibility 
which he covets will, probably, not be so dreadful as we had just reason to 
apprehend. Had France attacked us, or should she yet attack us, in our 
present defenceless condition ; should our cities be exposed to pillage, or the 
blood of our citizens be shed, either upon the land or the ocean ; should our 
national character be dishonored, tremendous, indeed, would be the responsi- 
bility of the gentleman. In that event, he need not beseech us to spare his 
vote from the process of expunging. You might as well attempt to expunge 
a sunbeam. That vote will live for ever in the memory of the American 
people. 

It was the vote of the Senate which gave the mortal blow to the fortifica- 
tion bill. Had they passed this appropriation of three millions, that bill would 
now have been a law. Where it died, it is scarcely necessary to inquire. It 
was in mortal agony when the consultation of six political doctors was held 
upon it at midnight, in our conference chamber, and it probably breathed its 
last, on its way from that chamber to the House of Representatives, for want 
of a quorum in that body. 

Its fate, in one respect, I hope may yet be of service to the country. It 
ought to admonish us, if possible, to do all our legislative business before mid- 
night on the last day of the session. I never shall forget the night I sat side 
by side, in the House of Representatives, with the Senator from Massachu- 
setts (Mr. Webster), until the morning had nearly dawned. The most im- 
portant bills were continually returning from the Senate with amendments. 
It would have been in the power of any one member remaining in the House 
to have defeated any measure by merely asking for a division. This would 
have shown that no quorum was present. The members who still remained 
were worn down and exhausted, and were thus rendered incapable of attend- 
ing to their duties. It was legislation without deliberation. I trust that this 
evil may be now corrected. Should it not, I do not know that, at the con- 



268 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

elusion of a Congress, my conscience would be so tender as to prevent me 
from voting, as I have done heretofore, after midnight on the third of March. 

I have one other point to discuss. I shall now proceed to present to the 
Senate the state of our relations with France, at the present moment, for the 
purpose of proving that we ought to adopt the resolutions of the Senator 
from Missouri (Mr. Benton), and grant all appropriations necessary for the 
defence of the country. For this purpose, we must again return to Paris. 
The President's annual message of December, 1834, arrived in that city on 
the 8th of January — a day propitious in our annals. The attack upon the 
British troops on the night of the 23d of December did not surprise them 
more than this message did the French ministers. After the most patient en- 
durance of wrongs for so many years, they seemed to be astounded that the 
President should have asserted our rights in such a bold and manly manner. 
That message, sir, will produce the payment of the indemnity. What effect 
had it upon the character of our country abroad? Let Mr, Livingston 
answer tliis question. In writing to the Secretary of State, on the 11th 
January,' 1835, he says : " It has certainly raised us in the estimation of other 
powers, if I may judge from the demeanor of their representatives here; and 
my opinion is, that as soon as the first excitement subsides, it will operate 
favorably on the councils of France." There Vv'as not an American in Paris, 
on that day, who, upon the perusal of this message, did not feel the flush of 
honest pride of country mantling in his countenance. 

On the 22d of November previous, Mr. Livingston was convinced that the 
king was sincere in his intention of urging the execution of the treaty, and 
then had no doubt of the sincerity of his cabinet. The Chambers assembled 
on the 1st of December; and after an arduous struggle for two days against 
the opposition, victory perched upon the banner of the ministers. They were 
thus securely seated in their places. On the 6th of December Mr. Living- 
ston again writes, that " The conversations I have had with the king and all 
the ministers convince me that now they are perfectly in earnest, and united 
on the question of the treaty, and that it will be urged with zeal and ability." 
In a few short days, however, a change came over their spirit. On the 22d 
December Mr. Livingston uses the following language in writing to the De- 
partment of State : " My last despatch (6th December) was written immedi- 
ately after the vote of the Chamber of Deputies had, as it was thought, 
secured a majority to the administration; and it naturally excited hopes 
which that supposition was calculated to inspire. I soon found, however, 
both from the tone of the administration press and from the language of the 
king and all the ministers with whom I conferred on the subject, that they 
were not willing to put their popularity to the test on our question ; it will not 
be made one on the determination of which the ministers are willing to risk 
their portfolios. The very next day, after the debate, the ministerial gazette 
{Des Debats) declared that, satisfied with the approbation the Chamber had 
given to their system, it was at perfect liberty to exercise its discretion as to 
particular measures which do not form an essential part of that system ; and 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 269 

the communications I subsequently had with the king and the ministers con- 
firmed me in the opinion that the law for executing our convention was to be 
considered as one of those free questions. I combated this opinion, and 
«isked whether the faithful observance of treaties was not an essential part of 
their system ; and, if so, whether it did not come within their rule." 

The observance of treaties was not an essential part of their system ! Victori- 
ous and securely fixed, the ministers would not risk their places in attempting to 
obtain from the Chambers the appropriation required to carry our treaty into 
execution. It would not be made a cabinet question. It was evident they 
had determined to pursue the same course of delay and procrastination which 
they had previously pursued. But the message arrived, and it roused them 
from their apathy. All doubts which had existed upon the subject of making 
the payment of our indemnity a cabinet question at once vanished. We 
have never heard of any such since ; and it was not until some months after 
that the French ministers thought of annexing any condition to this payment. 

On the 13th of January, Mr. Livingston had a conference with tbe Count 
de Rigny. He then explained to him the nature of a message from our 
President to Congress. He compared it to a family council under the French 
law, and showed that it was a mere communication from one branch of our 
Government to another, with which a foreign nation had no right to interfere, 
and at which they ought not to take offence. They parted on friendly terms, 
and again met on the same terms in the evening, at the Austrian Ambassa- 
dor's. Mr. Livingston was, therefore, much astonished when, about ten 
o'clock at night of the same day, he received a note from the count, inform- 
ing him that Mr. Serrurier, the French minister at Washington, had been re- 
called, and that his passports were at his service. This seems to have been a 
sudden determination of the French cabinet. 

Now, sir, upon the presumption that France had been insulted by the 
message, this was the proper mode of resenting the insult. Promptly to sus- 
pend all diplomatic intercourse with the nation who had menaced her or 
questioned her honor, was a mode of redress worthy of her high and chival- 
rous character. The next impulse of wounded pride would be promptly to 
pay the debt which she owed, and release herself from every pecuniary 
obligation to the nation which had done her this wrong. These were the first 
determinations of the king's ministers. 

France has since been placed before the world, by her rulers, in the most 
false position ever occupied by a brave and gallant nation. She believes her- 
self to be insulted, and what is the consequence ? She refuses to pay a debt 
now admitted to be just by all the branches of her government. Her 
wounded feelings are estimated by dollars and cents, and she withholds 
twenty-five millions of francs, due to a foreign nation, to soothe her injured 
pride. How are the mighty fallen I Truly it may be said, the days of 
chivalry are gone. Have the pride and the genius of Napoleon left no traces 
of themselves under the constitutional monarchy ? In private life, if you are 
insulted by an individual to whom you are indebted, what is the first impulse 



2;o LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

of a man of honor ? To owe no pecuniary obligation to the man who has 
wounded your feelings — to pay him the debt instantly, and to demand repara- 
tion for the insult, or at the least, to hold no friendly communication with 
him afterwards. 

This course the king's ministers had, at first, determined to pursue. The 
reason why they abandoned it, I shall endeavor to explain hereafter. 

Mr. Livingston, in his letter to Mr. Forsyth of the 14th January, 1835, 
says : " The law, it is said, will be presented to-day, and I have very little 
doubt that it will pass. The ministerial phalanx, reinforced by those of the 
opposition (and they are not a few), who will not take the responsibility of 
involving the country in the difficulties ichich they now see must ensue, will 
be sufficient to carry the vote." 

Did Mr. Livingston intend to say France would be terrified into this 
measure? By no means. But, in the intercourse between independent 
States, there is a point at which diplomacy must end, and when a nation must 
either abandon her rights, or determine to assert them by the sword, or by 
such strong and decided measures as may eventually lead to hostilities. When 
this point is reached, it becomes a serious and alarming crisis for those to 
whom, on earth, the destiny of nations is entrusted. When the one alterna- 
tive is war, either immediate or prospective, with all the miseries which follow 
in its train, and the other the payment of a just debt to an ancient ally and 
firm friend, who could doubt what must be the decision? Such was the posi- 
tion in which France stood toward the United States. Not only justice, but 
policy required the payment of the debt. In the event of war, or, of a non- 
intercourse between the two nations, her wine-growers, her producers and 
manufacturers of silk, and all her other manufacturing interests, especially 
those of her southern provinces, would be vitally injured. The payment of 
five millions of dollars would be but a drop in the ocean, compared with the 
extent of their sufferings. In France, they then believed that the time for 
diplomacy — the time for procrastination had ended. The President's message 
had opened their eyes to the importance of the subject. It Avas under this 
impression that Mr. Livingston predicted that the bill would pass the Cham- 
bers. That it would have done so without any condition, had Congress 
responded to the President's message, I do not say, by authorizing reprisals, 
but by manifesting a decided resolution to insist upon the execution of the 
treaty, will, I think, appear abundantly evident hereafter. 

The French ministry having manifested their sensibility to the supposed 
insult, by recalling Mr. Serrurier, proceeded immediately to present the bill 
for the execution of the treaty to the Chambers. In presenting it on the 
15th January, Mr. Humann, the minister of finance, addressed the Chamber. 
His speech contains the views then entertained by the French cabinet, I 
shall read an extract from it. He says : 

" General Jackson has been in error respecting the extent of the faculties 
conferred upon us, by the constitution of the State ; but if he has been mis- 
taken as to the laws of our country, we will not fall into the same error with 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 271 

regard to the institutions of the United States. Now, tlie spirit and lettw 
of those institutions authorize us to regard the document above named [the 
message], as the expression of an opinion merely personal, so long as that 
opinion has not received the sanction of the other two branches of the Amer- 
ican Government. The message is a Government act, which is still incom- 
plete, and should not lead to any of these determinations, which Fiance is in 
the habit of taking in reply to a threat or insult." 

The French ministry, at that time, considered the President's message, 
merely his personal act, until it should receive the sanction of Congress. 
They, then, had not dreamt of requiring an explanation of it, as the only 
condition on which they would pay the money. This was an after thought. 
The bill presented by Mr. Humann merely prescribed that the payment 
should not be made, "until it shall have been ascertained that the Govern- 
ment of the United States has done nothing to injure the interests of France." 
This bill was immediately referred to a committee, of which Mr. Dumon Avas 
the chairman. On the 28th of March, he reported it to the Chamber, with 
a provision, that the money should not be paid, if the Government of the 
United States shall have done anything " contrary to the dignities and the 
interests of France." Still we hear nothing of an explanation of the message 
being made a condition of the payment of the money. The clauses in the 
bill to which I have adverted were evidently inserted to meet the contingency 
of reprisals having been sanctioned by Congress. 

The debate upon the bill in the Chamber of Deputies commenced on the 
9th of April and terminated on the 18th. On that day General Valaze pro- 
posed his amendment declaring that " the payments in execution of the pres- 
ent law cannot be made until the French government shall have received 
satisfactory explanations with regard to the message of the President of the 
United States, dated the 2d December, 1834." 

The Duke de Broglie, the minister of foreign affairs, accepted this amend- 
ment. I shall read his remarks on this occasion. He says : " The intention 
of the government has always been conformable with the desire expressed by 
the author of the amendment which is now before the Chambers {great agita- 
tion), the government has always meant tliat diplomatic relations should not 
be renewed with the Government of the United States until it had received 
satisfactory explanations. The government, therefore, docs not repulse the 
amendment itself." After this, on the same day, the bill passed the Chamber 
by a vote of 289 to 137. 

Well might the Chamber be agitated at such an annunciation from the 
minister of foreign affairs. Why this sudden change in the policy of the 
French government? The answer is plain. Congress had adjourned on the 
4th of March, without manifesting by their actions any disposition to make 
the fulfilment of the treaty a serious question. Whilst our Treasury was 
overflowing, they had refused to make any provision for the defence of the 
country. They had left the whole coast of the United States from Maine to 
Georgia in a defenceless condition. The effect upon the French Chamber 



273 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

and the French people was such as might have been anticipated. To prove 
this, I shall read an extract from a speech delivered by Mr. Bignon, one of 
the Deputies, on the 10th April. I select this from many others, because it 
contains nothing which can be oflfensive to any Senator. It will be recol- 
lected that Mr. Bignon is the gentleman who had been more instrumental in 
defeating the bill at the previous session than any other member. 

" President Jackson's message has astonished them (the Americans) as 
well as us ; they have seen themselves thrown by it into a very hazardous 
situation. What have they done? They are too circumspect and clear- 
headed to express, by an official determination, their disapproval of an act 
which, in reality, has not received their assent. Some of them, for instance 
Mr, Adams, in the House of Representatives, may indeed, from a politic pa- 
triotism, have even eulogized the President's energy, and obtained from the 
Chamber the expression that the treaty of 1831 must be complied with; but 
at a preceding sitting the same member took pains to declare that he was 
not the defender of a system of war; he proclaimed aloud that the resolution 
adopted by the Senate was an expedient suggested by prudence, and he 
thought the House of Eepresentatives should pursue the same course. Gen- 
tlemen, the American legislature had to resort to expedients to get out of the 
embarrassing dilemma in ^\•hich the President's message had placed them ; 
and they acted wisely." 

From the conduct of Congress, the French Chambers were under the im- 
pression that the people of the United States would not adopt any energetic 
measures to compel the fulfilment of the treaty. They had no idea that the 
nation would sustain the President in his efforts. They had reason to beheve 
that he was almost left alone. They appear ever since to have acted under this 
delusion. According to the impression of Mr. Bignon, the nation was astounded 
at President Jackson's message. This is the true reason why the ministry ac- 
cepted the amendment requiring President Jackson to make an explanation. 

The best mode of obtaining justice from the powerful as well as from the 
weak — the best mode of elevating this nation to the lofty position she is 
destined to occupy among the nations of the earth — the best mode of prevent- 
ing war and preserving peace, is to stand up firmly for our rights. The 
assertion of these rights, not by threats, but boldly, manfully, and frankly, is 
the surest method of obtaining justice and respect from other nations. 

At so early a day as the 29th of January, Mr. Livingston had addressed a 
note to the Duke de Broglie, distinctly disavowing any intention on the part 
of the President, by his message, to intimidate France, or to charge the French 
government with bad faith. On the 25th of April, in another letter to the 
duke, he communicated to him the President's oflficial approbation of his 
former note. In this last letter, he reiterates his explanations, and assures 
the duke that, whilst the President intended to use no menace, nor to charge 
any breach of faith against the king's government, he never could and never 
would make any explanation of his message on the demand of a foreign gov- 
ernment. This letter would, of itself, be sufficient to give its author a high 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 273 

rank not only among the diplomatists, but the statesmen of his country. 
The sentiments it contains were unanimously approved by the American 
people. Although it was received by the duke before the bill had been acted 
upon by the Chamber of Peers, it produced no effect upon the French minis- 
try. The bill was finally passed and obtained the sanction of the king in a 
form requiring the President to explain his message before the money could 
be paid. 

This state of fact distinctly raises the important question, whether a Presi- 
dent of the United States can be questioned by a foreign government for 
anything contained in a message to Congress. The principle that he cannot, 
has already been firmly estabhshed by the practice of our Government. Even 
in our intercourse with France, in former times, the question has been set- 
tled. This principle results from the very nature of our institutions. It must 
ever be maintained inviolate. Reverse it, and you destroy the independent 
existence of this Republic, so far as its intercourse with foreign nations is 
concerned. 

The Constitution requires that the President of the United States "shall, 
from time to time, give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, 
and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge neces- 
sary and expedient." This information is intended not only for the use of 
Congress, but of the people. They are the source of all power, and from 
their impulse all legitimate legislation must proceed. Both Congress and the 
people must be informed of the state of our foreign relations by the executive. 
If the President cannot speak freely to them upon tliis subject ; if he cannot 
give them all the information which may be necessary to enable them to act, 
except under the penalty of offending a foreign government, the Constitution 
of the United States, to this extent, becomes a dead letter. The mainten- 
ance of this principle is an indispensable condition of our existence, under the 
present form of Government. 

If we are engaged in any controversy with a foreign nation, it is not only 
the right, but it is the imperative duty, of the President to communicate the 
facts to Congress, however much they may operate against that nation. Can 
we then, for a single moment, permit a foreign government to demand an 
apology from the President for performing one of his highest duties to the 
people of the United States? 

Let us put an extreme case. Suppose the President, after giving a his 
tory of our wrongs to Congress, recommends not merely a resort to reprisals, 
but to war, against another nation. Shall this nation, which has inflicted 
upon us injury, be permitted to change her position, to cancel all our claims 
for justice, and to insist that we have become the aggressors, because a resort 
to arms has been recommended ? I feel the most perfect confidence that not 
a single Senator will ever consent to yield this position to France or to any 
other nation. I need not labor this question. The subject has been placed 
in the clearest and strongest light by Mr. Livingston, in his letter to the Duke 
de Broglie of the 25th of AprU. 

I.— 18 



274 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHA]^AN. 

If any possible exemption to the rule could be tolerated, surely this would 
not present the case. The Duke de Broglie himself, in his letter to Mr. 
Pageot, is constrained to admit that there is not a single offensive sentence 
respecting France in the message ; but yet he complains of the general effect 
of the whole. 

With a full knowledge, then, that the President could not, would not, 
dare not explain his message, on the demand of any foreign government, the 
Duke de Broglie addresses his famous letter to the charge d'affaires at 
Washington. It bears date at Paris on the 17th June, 1835. Before I pro- 
ceed to make any remarks upon this letter, I wish to bring its character 
distinctly into view of the Senate. It commences by declaring, in opposition 
to the principle that the President of the United States cannot be called upon 
by a foreign government to make explanations of a message to Congress, that, 
" by virtue of a clause inserted in the article first, by the Chamber of Deputies, 
the French government must defer making the payments agreed upon, 
until that of the United States shall have explained the true meaning and real 
purport of divers passages inserted by the President of the Union in his message 
at the opening of the last session of Congress, and at tvhich all France, at the 
first aspect, was justly offended.'' 

It proceeds still further, and announces chat, " the government, having 
discovered nothing in that clause at variance with its own sentiments, or the 
course it had intended to pursue, the project of law thus amended on the 18th 
April, by the Chamber of Deputies, was carried on the 27th, to the Chamber 
of Peers." 

The duke, after having thus distinctly stated that an explanation of the 
message was required as a condition of the payment of the money, and after 
presenting a historical sketch of the controversy, then controverts, at consid- 
erable length, the position which had been maintained by Mr. Livingston, that 
the President could not be questioned by a foreign government for anything 
contained in a message to Congress. He afterwards asserts, in the broadest 
terms, that the explanations which had been voluntarily made by Mr. Living- 
ston, and sanctioned by the President, were not sufficient. 

In suggesting what would satisfy France, he says, " we do not here con- 
tend about this or that phrase, this or that allegation, this or that expression ; 
we contend about the intention itself, which has dictated that part of the 
message." And again, speaking of Mr, Livingston's letters of the 29th Jan- 
uary and 25th April, he adds : 

" You will easily conceive, sir, and the Cabinet of Washington will, we 
think, understand it also, that such phrases incidentally inserted in documents, 
the purport and tenor of which are purely polemical, surrounded, in some 
measure, by details of a controversy, which is besides not always free from 
bitterness, cannot dispel sufficiently the impression produced by the perusal of 
the message, nor strike the mind as would the same idea expressed in terms 
single, piosiiive, direct, and unaccompanied by any recrimination concerning facts 
or incidents no longer of any importance. Such is the motive which, among 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 275 

many others, hr.s placed the French government in the impossibility of ac- 
ceding to the wish expressed by Mr. Livingston, towards the conclusion of his 
note of the 29th of April, by declaring (to the Chamber of Peers probably) 
that previous explanations given by the minister of the United States, and 
subsequently approved by the President, had satisfied it." 

After having thus announced the kind of explanation which would be 
expected, he states, that the French government " in pausing then for the 
present, and waiting for the fulfilment of those engagements to be claimed, 
(the engagements of the treaty) and expecting those to be claimed in terms 
consistent icith the regard due to it, it is not afraid of being accused, nor 
France, which it represents, of being accused of appreciating national honor 
by any number of millions, which it could withhold as a compensation 
for any injury ofiered to it." The letter concludes by authorizing Mr. 
Pageot to read it to Mr. Forsyth, and if he he desirous, to let him take a copy 
of it. 

It is impossible to peruse this letter, able and ingenious as it is, without at 
once perceiving that it asks what the President can never grant, without vio- 
lating the principle that France has no right to demand an explanation of his 
message. 

On the 11th of September, Mr. Pageot, the French charge d'afi'aires, called 
at the Department of State and read this despatch to Mr. Forsyth. The 
latter did not think proper to ask a copy of it ; and for this he has been 
loudly condemned. In my judgment, his conduct was perfectly correct. 

No objection can be made to this indirect mode of communication with the 
Government of the United States adopted by the duke. It is sanctioned by 
diplomatic usage. The rules, however, which govern it, are clearly deducible 
from its very nature. It is a mere diplomatic feeler thrown out to ascertain 
the views of another government. The duke himself justly observes that its 
object is " to avoid the irritation which might involuntarily rise from an ex- 
change of contradictory notes in a direct controversy." 

Had Mr. Forsyth asked and received a copy of this despatch, he must have 
given it an answer. Respect for the source from which it proceeded would 
have demanded this at his hands. If this answer could have been nothing 
but a direct refusal to comply with the suggestions of the French govern- 
ment, then he was correct in not requesting leave to take a copy of it. Why 
was this the case ? Because it would have added to the difficulties of the 
question, already sufficiently numerous, and would have involved him in a 
direct controversy, which it is the very object of this mode of communica- 
tion to prevent. This is the reason why it was left by the despatch itself, 
within his own option whether to request a copy or not ; and his refusal to 
make this request ought to have given no ofience to the French government. 

Now, sir, what answer could he have given to this communication, but a 
direct refusal ? Had not the duke been fully apprised before he wrote this 
despatch, that it could receive no other answer ? It required explanations as 
a condition of the payment of the money, which he had been informed the 



276 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

President could never make. On this ground, then, and for the very purpose 
of avoiding controversy, the conduct of Mr. Forsyth is correct. 

But there is another reason to justify his conduct, which, I think, must 
carry conviction to every mind. The President proposed, in his annual mes- 
sao'e voluntarily to declare, that he had never intended to menace France, or 
to impeach the faith of the French government. This he has since done in 
the strongest terms. As offence was taken by the French government at the 
language of a former message, it was believed that such a declaration in a 
subsequent message would be, as it ought to be, entirely satisfactory to 
France. Had Mr. Forsyth taken a copy of this despatch, and placed it 
among the archives of the Government, how could the President have made, 
consistently with his principles, the disclaimer which he has done ? A de- 
mand for an explanation would thus have been interposed by a foreign gov- 
ernment, which would have compelled him to remain silent. The refusal of 
Mr. Forsyth to ask a copy of the despatch, left the controversy in its old 
condition ; and, so far as our government was concerned, left this letter from 
the Duke de Broglie to Mr. Pageot as if it never had been written. The 
President, therefore, remained at perfect liberty to say what he thought 
proper in his message. 

If this letter had proposed any reasonable terms of reconciling our difificul- 
ties with France — if it had laid any foundation on which a rational hope 
might have rested that it would become the means of producing a result so 
desirable, it would have been the duty of Mr. Forsyth to request a copy. 
Upon much reflection, however, I must declare that I cannot imagine what 
good could have resulted from it in any contingency ; and it might have done 
much evil. Had it prevented the President from speaking as he has done in 
his last message, concerning France, it might have involved the country in 
a much more serious misunderstanding with that power than existed at the 
present moment. 

I should be glad to say no more of this despatch, if I could do so consis- 
tently with a sense of duty. Mr. Pageot did not rest satisfied with Mr. For- 
syth's omission to request a copy of it, as he ought to have done. He 
deemed it proper to attempt to force that upon him which the despatch itself 
had left entirely to his own discretion. Accordingly, on the 1st of December 
last, he enclosed him a copy. On the third, Mr. Forsyth returned it with a 
poUte refusal. On the fifth, Mr. Pageot again addressed Mr. Forsyth, and 
avowed that his intention in communicating the document, "was to make 
known the real disposition of my government to the President of the United 
States, and through him to Congress and the American people" Thus it is 
manifest that his purpose was to make the President the instrument by which 
he might appeal to the American people against the American Government. 
After he had failed in this effort, Avhat is his next resort ? He publishes this 
despatch to the people of the United States through the medium of our pub- 
lic journals. I now hold in my hand the number of the Courier des Etats 
Unis of the 20th of January, a journal published in New York, which con- 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 277 

tains the original despatch in the French language. In a subsequent number 
of the same journal, of the 24th January, there is an editorial article on the 
subject of the President's special message to Congress, and of this despatch, 
of a part of which I shall give my own translation. It is as follows : 

"Our last number contained the despatch of M. the Duke de Broglie to the 
charge d'affaires of France at Washington, concerning which the Senate had 
demanded such explanations as were in the power of the executive. On the 
same day, the late message of the President of the United States, which had 
been expected with so much impatience and anxiety, arrived at New York. 
To this document are annexed many letters of the Duke de Broglie, of Mr, 
Forsyth, and of Mr. Pageot, which will be read with great interest. We give 
a simple analysis of the least important, and an exact copy of those ivhich have 
been written originally in French." 

'• The public attention was first occupied with the letter of the Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, which was known here some hours before the message of 
the President of the United States; and if some journals of the Government 
have found this publication unseasonable, made by the legation of France ac- 
cording to the orders which it had received, nobody, at least, has been able to 
deny the talent, the moderation, and the force of reasoning which have pre- 
sided at its preparation." 

By whom was the legation of France ordered to publish this despatch ? 
Who alone had the power of issuing such an order ? The French govern- 
ment. Against this positive language, I can still scarcely believe that the 
Duke de Broglie has given an order so highly reprehensible. 

The publication of this despatch was an outrage upon all diplomatic usage. 
It ought to Iiave been intended as the harbinger of peace, and not of renewed 
controversy. From its very nature it was secret and confidential. If not re- 
ceived, it ought to have been as if it never had existed. Upon any other 
principle, it would aggravate the controversy which such communications are 
always intended to prevent. It has now been diverted from its natural 
purpose by the French legation, and has been made the subject of an appeal 
by France to the American people against their own Government. It has 
thus greatly increased the difficulties between the two countries. It has pro- 
claimed to the world that France requires from the President of the United 
States, an apology of his message as an indispensable condition of the execu- 
tion of our treaty. It has, therefore, rendered it much more difficult for her 
to retract. 

The true meaning of this despatch is now rendered manifest to the most 
sceptical. The Duke de Broglie, in his interview with Mr. Barton, on the 12th 
October last, has placed his own construction upon it. The apology which he 
then required from the President contains his own commentary upon this 
despatch. I need not read the history of that interview to the Senate, to 
prove that I am correct in this assertion. It must be fresh in the recollection 
of every Senator. 

Considered as an appeal to the American people against their own Gov- 



278 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

eminent, the publication of this despatch deserves still more serious consider- 
ation. Foreign influence, in all ages, has been the bane of republics. It has 
destroyed nearly all of them which have ever existed. We ought to resist 
its approaches on every occasion. In the very infancy of our existence as a 
nation, a similar attempt was made by France. It was then repulsed as be- 
came a nation of freemen. The present attempt will have the same effect on 
the American people. It will render them still more firm and still more 
united in the cause of their country. 

Of Mr. Barton's recall, I need say but little. It was the direct consequence 
of the refusal of France to execute the treaty, without an apology from the 
President of his message. 

Diplomatic relations between the two countries had been first interrupted 
by France. On this subject, hear what the Count de Rigny said in his expose 
read to the Chamber of Peers, on the 27th April last, on presenting the bill 
for the execution of our treaty. I give my own translation : 

" You know the measure which the government of the king adopted at 
the very instant when the message, presented by the President of the Union, 
at the opening of the last Congress, arrived in Europe. You know that 
since that time, a similar measure had been adopted by President Jackson 
himself The two ministers, accredited near the two governments, are re- 
ciprocally recalled; the effect of this double recall is at this moment, if not to 
interrupt, in all respects, the diplomatic communications between the two 
States, at least to interrupt them in what regards the treaty of the 4th July. 
If these relations ought to be renewed, and we doubt not that they ought, it 
is not for us hereafter to take the initiative." 

On the 5th of June, the President had officially sanctioned the explana- 
tions which had been made to the French government by Mr. Livingston, in 
his letter of the 25th of April, as he had previously sanctioned those which 
had been made by the same gentleman, in his note of the 29th of January. 
These were considered by the President, amply sufficient to satisfy the 
susceptible feelings of France. In order to give them full time to produce 
their effect, and to afford the French ministry an ample opportunity for re- 
flection, he dela3'ed sending any orders to demand the money secured by the 
treaty until the middle of December. On the 14th of that month, Mr. 
Barton was instructed to call upon the Duke de Broglie, and request to be 
informed what were the intentions of the French government, in relation to 
the payment of the money secured by the treaty. He expected these in- 
structions on the 20th of October. The special message has communicated to 
us the result. "We will pay the money," says the Duke de Broglie, "when 
the Government of the United States is ready on its part, to declare to tis, by 
addressing its claim to us officially in writing, that it regrets the misunderstand- 
ing which has arisen between the two countries ; thai this misunderstanding is 
founded on a mistake ; that it never entered into its intention to call in question 
the good faith of the French government, nor to take a menacing attitude to- 
wards France;" and he adds, "if the Government of the United States does 



SPEECH ON THE FRENCH TREATY. 379 

not give this assurance, we shall be obliged to think that this misunderstanding 
is not the result of an errors 

Is there any American so utterly lost to those generous feelings which love 
of country should inspire, as to purchase five millions with the loss of national 
honor ? Who, for these or any number of miUions, would see the venerable 
man, now at the head of our Government, bowing at the footstool of the 
throne of Louis Philippe, and like a child, prepared to say its lesson, repeat- 
ing this degrading apology ? First, perish the five milUons, — perish a thou - 
sand times the amount. The man whose bosom has been so often bared in 
the defence of his country will never submit to such degrading terms. His 
motto has always been, death before dishonor. 

Why, then, it may be asked, have I expressed a hope, a belief, that this 
unfortunate controversy will be amicably terminated when the two nations 
are now directly at issue ? I will tell you why. This has been called a mere 
question of etiquette ; and such it is, so far as France is concerned. She has 
already received every explanation which the most jealous susceptibihty 
ought to demand. These have been voluntarily tendered to her. 

Since the date of the Duke de Broglie's letter to Mr. Pageot of the 17th 
June, we have received from the President of the United States his general 
message at the commencement of the session, and his special message on 
French affairs. Both these documents disclaim, in the strongest terms, any 
intention to menace France, or to impute bad faith to the French government 
by the message of December, 1834. Viewing the subject in this light; con- 
sidering that at the interview with Mr. Barton, the duke could not have antici- 
pated what would be the tone of these documents, I now entertain a strong 
hope that the French government have already reconsidered their determina- 
tion. If a mediation has been proposed and accepted, I cannot entertain a 
doubt as to what will be the opinion of the mediator. He ought to say to 
France, you have already received all the explanations, and these have been 
voluntarily accorded, which the United States can make without national 
degradation. With these you ought to be satisfied. With you, it is a mere 
question of etiquette. All the disclaimers which you ought to desire have 
already been made by the President of the United States. The only ques- 
tion with you now is not one of substance, but merely whether these explana- 
tions are in proper form. But in regard to the United States, the question is 
far different. What is with you mere etiquette, is a question of life and death 
to them. Let the President of the United States make the apology which 
you have dictated, — let him once admit the right of a foreign government to 
question his messages to Congress, and to demand explanations of any lan- 
guage at which they may choose to take offence, and their independent exis- 
tence as a Government, to that extent, is virtually destroyed. 

We must remember that France may yield with honor; ive never can, 
without disgrace. Will she yield ? That is the question. I confess I should 
have entertained a stronger belief that she would, had she not published the 
duke's letter to Mr. Pageot as an appeal to the American people. She must 



2gQ LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

still believe that the people of this country are divided in opinion in regard to 
the firm maintenance of their rights. In this she will find herself entirely- 
mistaken. But should Congress, at the present session, refuse to sustain the 
President by adopting measures of defence ; should the precedent of the last 
session be followed for the present year, then I shall entertam the Tnost 
gloomy forebodings. The Father of his country has informed us that the best 
mode of preserving peace is to be prepared for war. I firmly believe, there- 
fore that a unanimous vote of the Senate in favor of the resolutions now be- 
fore them, to follow to Europe the acceptance of the mediation, would, almost 
to a certainty, render it successful. It would be an act of the soundest policy 
as well as of the highest patriotism. It would prove, not that we intend to 
menace France, because such an attempt would be ridiculous ; but that the 
American people are unanimous in the assertion of their rights, and have 
resolved to prepare for the Avorst. A French fleet is now hovering upon our 
coasts; and shall we sit still, with an overflowing Treasury, and leave our 
country defenceless ? This will never be said with truth of the American 
Congress. 

If war should come, which God forbid, — if France should still persist in 
her effort to degrade the American people in the person of their Chief Mag- 
istrate, — we may appeal to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and look 
forward with confidence to victory from that Being in whose hands is the 
destiny of nations. 

Previous to the delivery of this speech, the President had, on 
the 15th of Januar}^, recommended to Congress a partial non- 
intercourse with France. But in a short time the government 
of Great Britain made an offer of mediation, which was ac- 
cepted, and the whole difficulty with France was amicably 
adjusted. 



/ 



CHAPTER XII. 

1835— 1837. 

REMOVAl OF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS — BENTON'S " EXPUNGING " 
RESOLUTION. 

AMONG the exciting topics of this period, there was no 
Jl\- ground on which the Whigs attacked the administration 
of General Jackson with greater severity than that which re- 
lated to his removal of executive officers. In the remarkable 
protest, which he sent to the Senate in 1834, against the censure 
which that body had passed upon his executive acts, and espe- 
cially his removal of one Secretary of the Treasury who would 
not, and the appointment of another who would, remove the 
public deposits from the Bank of the United States, he had 
claimed a general executive poAver of supervision and control 
over all executive officers. He had made many other removals 
from office, whicli were complained of as dictated by purely 
political motives ; and in the session of 1834-5, a bill was in- 
troduced into the Senate, one of the objects of which was to 
require the President, when making a nomination to fill a va- 
cancy occasioned by the removal of any officer, to state the fact 
of such removal, and to render reasons for it. On this bill, 
Mr. Buchanan, on the 17th of February, 1835, made the follow- 
ing speech, whicli is of value now, because it relates to a topic 
that has not yet ceased to be a matter of controversy : 

Mr. President : It is with extreme diffidence and reluctance that I rise to 
address you on the present occasion. It was my intention to suffer this bill 
to pass, contenting myself with a simple vote in the negative. This course I 
should have pursued, had the constitutional question been fully discussed by 
any gentleman on our side of the Senate. As this has not been done, I feel 
it to be a duty which I owe to those who sent me here, as well as to myself, 
to express my opinion on the subject, and the reasons on which that opinion 
is founded. 



282 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The present bill presents a most important question concerning our funda- 
mental institutions. It attacks a construction of the Constitution of the 
United States which has been considered settled for almost half a century. 
Has the President, under the Constitution, the power of removing executive 
officers ? If any question can ever be put at rest in this country, this, em- 
phatically, ought to be considered that one. It was solemnly settled in 1789 
by the first Congress of the United States. Of whom was that Congress 
composed ? Of the men who had sustained the toils and dangers of the 
revolutionary war — of the men who sat in the convention which framed the 
Constitution, and who passed from that convention into the first Congress. 
These men, who laid the foundations of our Republic broad and deep, most 
solemnly and deliberately decided, that to the President, and to him alone, 
belonged the power of removal. This was not at a moment when the 
country was convulsed by party spirit. Very far from it. The Fathers of 
the Republic were then occupied in putting the Government in motion, and 
in establishing such principles as might preserve the liberties and promote the 
best interests of the American people for ages. In what condition are we, 
at the present moment, to rejudge the judgment of those men and reverse 
their solemn decision ? Is not party spirit raging throughout the land ? Are 
there not high party feehngs in this body? Are we in a condition calmly 
and deliberately, without prejudice and without passion, to review and to 
condemn their judgment? 

Why, sir, even if there were no authoiity in the Constitution for the 
power of removal, the decision of this body, at this time, would have but 
little influence among the people. They would compare the calmness — the 
self-possession — the freedom from political excitement of the sages who 
established the precedent, with the party violence and the high political 
feeling of the Senate at the present day; and the weight of authority would 
be all against us. 

The debate in the first Congress was very long and very able. Every 
argument which patriotism and ingenuity could suggest was exhausted. The 
question was at length decided in the House of Representatives on the 23d 
June, 1789. On the yeas and nays, thirty voted in affirmance of the Presi- 
dent's power of removal, and eighteen against it ; — a large majority, consider- 
ing the comparatively small number of which the House was then composed. 

The question arose on the bill to establish the Department of Foreign 
Affairs. It contained a clause declaring the Secretary of State " to be re- 
movable from office by the President of the United States." From this 
clause it might have been inferred that the power of removal was intended 
to be conferred upon the President by Congress, and not acknowledged to 
exist in him under the Constitution. To remove every difficulty,— to place 
doubt at defiance in all future time, the words " to be removable from office 
by the President of the United States" were stricken from the bill, and this 
right was expressly acknowledged to exist independently of all legislation. 
By the second section of the bill, which became a law on the 27th July, 1789, 



REMOVAL OF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS. 283 

it is declared that "the Chief Clerk in the Departraent of Foreign Affairs," 
lohenever the principal officer shall be removed from office by the President of 
the United States, or in any other case of vacancy, shall, during such vacancy, 
have the charge and custody of all records, books, and papers, appertaining 
to the said Department." Here then is a clear, strong, distinct recognition 
by the House of Representatives of the President's power of removal, not 
by virtue of law, but under the Constitution. This phraseology was carefully 
adopted for the purpose of putting this very question at rest forever, so fur 
as Congress could effect this purpose. 

The bill, having passed the House of Representatives, was sent to the 
Senate for their concurrence. The power of removal was there solemnly 
considered. This was the very body which, according to the doctrine of 
gentlemen, has a right to control this power ; and yet they affirmed the prin- 
ciple that it was vested in the President, and in him alone. It is true that 
the question was determined by the casting vote of Mr. Adams, — then the 
Vice-President : but the act was approved by General Washington, and the 
power has ever since been exercised without dispute by him and his succes- 
sors in office, until after the election of the present President. Washington, 
the elder Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and the younger Adams re- 
moved whom they pleased from office ; but after the accession of Jackson, 
the existence of this power is denied. We are now required to believe that 
all which former Presidents have done was wrong ; — that the first Congress 
were entirely mistaken in their construction of the Constitution : — and that 
the President does not possess the power of removal except with the con- 
currence of the Senate. 

If ever a question has occurred in the history of any country which ought 
to be considered settled, this is that one. A solemn decision at first, adopted 
in practice afterwards by all branches of the Government, for five and forty 
years, makes the precedent one of almost irresistible force. 

What then have we a right to expect on our side of the House from the 
opposition ? Not merely that they shall prove it to be a doubtful question, 
but they shall present a case so clear as to render it manifest that all which 
has been done has been without authority, and all the removals which have 
ever been made, have been in violation of the Constitution. The burden 
rests entirely upon the gentlemen, and a ponderous load they have to sustain. 

But, sir, if the question were entirely new, if it never had been decided 
either by precedent or by practice, I think it may be made abundantly clear, 
that the strength of the argument is greatly on the side of those who main- 
tain the power. 

What is the nature of the Constitution of the United States? The 
powers which it devolves upon the Government, are divided into three 
distinct classes, the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. To preserve 
the liberties of any country, it is necessary that these three branches of the 
government should be kept distinct and separate as far as possible. "When 
they are all united in the same person — this is the very definition of 



284 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

despotism. As you approximate to this state of things, in the same propor- 
tion you advance towards arbitrary power. These are axioms which cannot 
— which will not be denied. 

Doubtless for wise purposes, the framers of our Constitution have in a very 
few excepted cases, blended these powers together. The executive, by his 
veto, has a control over our legislation. The Senate, although a branch of 
the legislature, exercises judicial power in cases of impeachment. The Presi- 
dent nominates, " and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate," 
appoints all officers, except those of an inferior nature, the appointment of 
which may be vested by Congress " in the President alone, in the courts of 
law, or in the heads of departments." 

Now, sir, my position is, that when the Constitution of the United States, 
in a special case, has conferred upon the Senate, which is essentially a branch 
of the legislature, a participation in executive power, you cannot by con- 
struction extend this power beyond the plain terms of the grant. It is an 
exception from the general rule pervading the whole instrument. Appoint- 
ment to ofiice is in the strictest sense an executive power. But it is expressly 
declared that the assent of the Senate shall be necessary to the exercise of 
this power on the part of the President. The grant to the Senate is special. 
In this particular case, it is an abstraction from the general executive powers 
granted under the Constitution to the Preaident. According to the maxim 
of the common law, expressio unius est exdusio alterius — it follows conclu- 
sively that what has not been given is withheld, and remains in that branch 
of the Government which is the appropriate depository of executive power. 
The exception proves the rule. And the grant of executive power to the 
Senate is confined to appointments to office, and to them alone. This neces- 
sarily excludes other executive powers. It cannot, therefore, be contended 
with any force, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) has con- 
tended, that because the consent of the Senate is made necessary by the 
Constitution to appointments of officers, — that, therefore, by implication, it is 
necessary for their removal. Besides, these two things are very distinct in 
their nature, as I shall hereafter have occasion to demonstrate. 

But to proceed with the argument. I shall contend that the sole power of 
removing executive officers is vested in the President by the Constitution. 
First, from a correct construction of the instrument itself; and second, even 
if that were doubtful, from the great danger resulting to the public interest 
from any other construction. 

The Constitution declares in express language that " the executive power 
shall be vested in a President of the United States." Under these general 
terms, I shall, once for all, disclaim the idea of attempting to derive any por- 
tion of the power of the Chief Magistrate from any other fountain than the 
Constitution itself. I therefore entirely repel the imputation, so far as I am 
concerned, which would invest him with executive powers derived from the 
prerogatives of the kings or emperors of the old world. Such arguments are 
entirely out of the question. 



REMOVAL OF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS. 285 

The Constitution also declares that " he shall take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed." These two clauses of the Constitution confer the exe- 
cutive power on the President, and define his duties. Is, then, the removal 
from office an executive power ? If it be so, there is an end of the question ; 
because the Constitution nowhere declares that the Senate, or any other 
human tribunal, shall participate in the exercise of this power. It will not 
be contended but that the power of removal exists, and must exist, some- 
where. Where else can it exist but in the executive, on whom the Constitu- 
tion imposes the obligation of taking care that the laws shall be faithfully 
executed? It will not be pretended that the power of removal is either of a 
legislative or judicial character. From its very nature, it belongs to the exe- 
cutive. In case he discovers that an officer is violating his trust — that instead 
of executing the laws, his conduct is in direct opposition to their requisition, 
is it not, strictly speaking, an executive power to arrest him in his career, by 
removing him from oflice ? How could the President execute the trust con- 
fided to him, if he were destitute of this authority ? If he possessed it not, 
he would be compelled to witness the executive officers violating the laws of 
Congress without the power of preventing it. 

On this subject, it is impossible for me to advance anything new. It was 
exhausted by Mr. Madison, in the debate of 1789, in the House of Represen- 
tatives. I am confident the Senate will indulge me whilst I read two extracts 
from his speeches on that occasion, delivered on the 16th and 17th June, 
1789. The first was delivered on the IGth June, 1789, and is as follows : 

" By a strict examination of the Constitution, on what appears to be its 
true principles, and considering the great departments of the Government in 
the relation they have to each other, I have my doubts whether we are not 
absolutely tied down to the construction declared in the bill. In the first 
section of the first article, it is said that all legislative powers herein granted 
shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. In the second article, it 
is affirmed that the executive power shall be vested in a President of the 
United States of America. In the third article, it is declared that the judicial 
power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court ; and in 
such inferior courts as Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish, 

"I suppose it will be readily admitted, that so far as the Constitution has 
separated the powers of these great departments, it would be improper to 
combine them together ; and so far as it has left any particular department in 
the entire possession of the powers incident to that department, I conceive 
we ought not to qualify them further than they are qualified by the Constitu- 
tion. The legislative powers are vested in Congress, and are to be exercised 
by them uncontrolled by any other department, except the Constitution has 
qualified it otherwise. The Constitution has qualified the legislative power, 
by authorizing the President to object to any act it may pass, requiring, in 
this case, two-thirds of both Houses to concur in making a law ; but still the 
absolute legislative power is vested in the Congress with this qualification 
alone. 



286 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

" The Constitution affirms, that the executive power shall be vested in the 
President. Are there exceptions to this proposition ? Yes, there are. The 
Constitution says, that in appointing to office, the Senate shall be associated 
with the President, unless in case of inferior officers, when the law shall 
otherwise direct. Have we a right to extend this exception ? I believe not. 
If the Constitution had invested all executive power in the President, I 
venture to assert that the Legislature has no right to diminish or modify his 
executive authority." 

Again : 

" The doctrine, however, which seems to stand most in opposition to the 
principles I contend for, is, that the power to annul an appointment is, in the 
nature of thing;?, incidental to the power which makes the appointment. I 
agree that if nothing more was said in the Constitution than that the Presi- 
dent, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, should appoint to 
office, there would be great force in saying that the power of removal resulted 
by a natural implication from the power of appointing. But there is another 
part of the Constitution, no less explicit than the one on which the gentle- 
man's doctrine is founded ; it is that part which declares that the executive 
power shall be vested in a President of the United States. 

"The association of the Senate with the President in exercising that par- 
ticular function, is an exception to this general rule, and exceptions to gen- 
eral rules, I conceive, are ever to be taken strictly. But there is another part 
of the Constitution which inclines, in my judgment, to favor the construction 
I put upon it; the President is required to take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed. If the duty to see the laws faithfully executed be required at 
the hands of the Executive Magistrate, it would seem that it was generall5 
intended he should have that species of power which is necessary to accom- 
plish that end. Now, if the officer, when once appointed, is not to depend 
upon the President for his official existence, but upon a distinct body, (for 
where there are two negatives required, either can prevent the removal,) I 
confess I do not see how the President can take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed. It is true, by a circuitous operation, he may obtain an im- 
peachment, and even without this it is po'^sible he may obtain the con- 
currence of the Senate for the purpose of displacing an officer; but Avould 
this give that species of control to the Executive Magistrate which seems to 
be required by the Constitution ? I own, if my opinion was not contrary to 
that entertained by what I suppose to be the minority on this question, I 
should be doubtful of being mistaken, when I discovered how inconsistent 
that construction would make the Constitution with itself. I can hardly 
bring myself to imagine the wisdom of the convention who framed the Con- 
stitution contemplated such incongruity." 

But, sir, if doubts could arise on the language of the Constitution itself, 
then it would become proper, for the purpose of ascertaining the true mean- 
ing of the instrument, to resort to arguments ab inconvenienti. The framers 
of the Constitution never intended it to mean what would defeat the very 



REMOVAL OF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS. 287 

purposes which it was intended to accomplish. I think I can prove that to 
deprive tlie President of the power of removal would be fatal to the best in- 
terests of the country. 

And first, the Senate cannot always be in session. I thank Heaven for 
that. We must separate and attend to our ordinary business. It is necessary 
for a healthy political constitution that we should bicathe the fresh and pure 
air of the country. The political excitement would rise too high if it were 
not cooled off in this manner. The American people never will consent, and 
never ought to consent, that our sessions shall become perpetual. The framers 
of the Constitution never intended that this should be the case. But once 
establish the principle that the Senate must consent to removals, as well as to 
appointments, and this consequence is inevitable. 

A foreign minister in a remote part of the world is pursuing a course, 
dangerous to the best interests, and ruinous to the character of the country. 
He is disgracing us abroad, and endangering the public peace. He has been 
intrusted wich an important negotiation, and is betraying his trust. He has 
become corrupt, or is entirely incompetent. Tliis information arrives at 
"Washington, three or four days after the adjournment of Congress on the 3d 
of March. What is to be done? Is the President to be entirely powerless 
until the succeeding December, when the Senate may meet again? Shall he 
be obliged to wait until the mischcf is entirely consummated — until the 
country is ruined — before he can recall the corrupt or wicked minister? Or 
will any gentleman contend that upon every occasion, when a removal from 
office becomes necessary, he shall call the Senators from their homes through- 
out this widely extended republic ? And yet, this is the inevitable conse- 
quence of the position contended for by gentlemen. Could the framers of 
the Constitution ever have intended such an absurdity? This argument was 
also adverted to by Mr. Madison. 

But again, there are great numbers of disbursing officers scattered over 
the Union. Information is received during the recess of the Senate, that one 
of them in Arkansas or at the Rocky Mountains, has been guilty of pecula- 
tion, and is wasting the public money. Must the President fold his arms, and 
suffi^r him to proceed in his fraudulent course, until the next meeting of the 
Senate ? The truth is, that the President cannot execute the laws of the 
Union, without this power of removal. 

But cases still stronger may be presented. The heads of departments are 
the confidential advisers of the President. It is chiefly through their agency 
that he must conduct the great operations of Government. Without a direct 
control over them, it would be impossible for him to take care that the laws 
shall be faithfully executed. Suppose that one of them, during the recess of 
the Senate, violates his instructions, refuses to hold any intercourse with the 
President, and pursues a career which he believes to be in opposition to the 
Constitution, the laws and the best interests of the country. Shall the ex- 
ecutive arm be paralyzed ; and in such a case, must he patiently submit to all 
these evils until the Senate can be convened ? In time of war, the country 



283 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

might be ruined by a corrupt Secretary of War, before the Senate could be 
assembled. 

It is not my intention, on this occasion, to discuss the question of the re- 
moval of the deposits from the Bank of the United States. I merely wish 
to present it as a forcible illustration of my argument. Suppose the late 
Secretary of the Treasury had determined to remove the deposits, and the 
President had believed this measure would be as ruinous to the country as 
the friends of the bank apprehended. If the Secretary, notwithstanding the 
remonstrances of the President, had proceeded to issue the order for their re- 
moval, what should we have heard from those who were the loudest in their 
denunciations against the Executive, if he had said, my arms are tied, I have 
no power to arrest the act — the deposits must be removed, because I cannot 
remove my Secretary ? Here the evil would have been done before the 
Senate could possibly have been assembled. I am indebted to the speech of the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun), at the last session, for this illus- 
tration. The truth is, view the subject in any light you may, the power of 
removal is in its nature inseparable from the executive power. 

I have been presenting the inconveniences which would arise, during the 
recess of the Senate, from the want of this power in the executive. But 
suppose the Senate to be always in session, would this remove every dififi- 
culty ? By no means. Confer upon the Senate the power of rejecting re- 
movals, and you make the executive, in the language of the debate of 1789, 
a double-headed monster. That power on whom is devolved the execution 
of your laws, must be able to remove a corrupt or an incompetent agent from 
office, or he cannot perform his duties. The Senate may, without inconvenience, 
and with very great advantage to the country, participate in appointments ; 
but when the man is once in office, the President must necessarily possess the 
power of turning him out in case he does not perform his duties. This 
power ought not to depend upon the will of the Senate ; for that body have 
nothing to do with the execution of the laws. 

If the power contended for were vested in the Senate, what would be the 
consequences? Still more dangerous, if possible, than any which I have yet 
depicted. The cases in which removals are necessary, must rapidly increase 
with the number of our officers and our rapidly extending population. If the 
President must assign reasons to the Senate for his removals, according to the 
provisions of this bill, or if the Senate must participate in these removals, as 
well as in appointments, it necessarily follows, that these reasons must be in- 
vestigated. Witnesses must be examined to ascertain the truth or falsehood 
of the charges made against the officer sought to be removed. The case must 
be tried judicially. Time must be consumed to the prejudice of our other 
duties. The legislative functions of the Senate must thus become impaired, 
and feelings excited between co-ordinate branches of the Government calcu- 
lated to produce a most injurious effect upon the country. In this state of 
things, the case might readily occur which was anticipated by Mr. Madison in 
1789. A majority of the Senate might even keep one of the heads of 



REMOVAL OF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS. 289 

department in office against the will of the President. Whether they would 
have done so or not last winter, in the case of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
I shall not pretend to determine. 

If this power were conferred upon the Senate, it would interfere with our 
judicial functions to a dangerous and alarming extent. The removal of a high 
officer of the Government is recommended by the President to the Senate, 
because of official misconduct. The charges are tried before the Senate. 
From the very nature of the question it must become in fact a judicial investi- 
gation. The Senate determine either that he shall remain in his office or that 
he shall be removed. In either case, the House of Representatives, possessing 
the sole power of impeachment under the Constitution, determine to exercise 
it ao-ainst this officer. But the Senate have, by their previous proceedings, 
utterly disqualified themselves from giving to the accused an impartial trial. 
They have already decided upon his guilt or his innocence. Instead of pro- 
ceeding to the trial, unbiased by favor or by prejudice, their minds are in- 
flamed, their judgments are biased, and they come to the investigation with 
the feelings of partisans, rather than those of judges. The House of Repre- 
sentatives would have a just right to complain loudly against the exercise of 
this power by the Senate. We should thus disqualify ourselves from judging 
impartially in cases between the people of the United States and the high 
officers of the Government. 

I think I have successfully established the position that no two things can 
in their nature be more distinct than the power of appointment and that of 
removal. If this be the case, then what becomes of the argument of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) ? It rested entirely upon the 
principle, that these two powers were so identical in their nature, that be- 
cause the Senate, under the Constitution, have the express power of advising 
and consenting to appointments, that, therefore, by implication, they must 
possess the power of advising and consenting to removals. The inference is 
without foundation. 

The truth is, that the more we discuss this question, we shall have the 
greater reason to admire the wisdom of the Constitution, and of those en- 
lightened and patriotic men who placed that construction upon it in the 
be"-inning, which I shall venture to predict never will be disturbed by the 
American people. The Senate, from the nature of the body, are fully compe- 
tent to assist the President in appointments. It would change their character 
altogether, and paralyze the executive arm of the Government, if they were 
to usurp the power of interfering in removals from office. Let the Constitu- 
tion and the construction of it by its founders, in this particular, be perpetual 1 

It has been objected that the President, by this construction, is too far re- 
moved from responsibility in the exercise of this power. But he is responsble 
to the American people, whose servant he is, in this as in all other cases. 
Unless you palsy the executive arm, and render it powerless to do good, lest 
it may do evil, you cannot support the doctrine which has been urged. You 
must vest some discretion ; you must repose some confidence in the executive, 
I.— 19 



290 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

or the wheels of Government must stand still. Should he abuse his power, 
he is liable to the censure of public opinion ; and, in flagrant cases, he may be 
impeached. 

It was contended in the first Congress, and the same argument has been 
urged upon the present occasion, that the power of removal was not recog- 
nized by the Constitution —that it was a case omitted, and that, therefore, by 
implication, it belongs to Congress. This argument was fully met and suc- 
cessfully refuted in 1789. If this principle were established, the executive 
power would have no necessary control over executive officers. Con- 
gress might confer the power of removal upon the Senate alone, or upon the 
House of Representatives alone, or upon both conjointly, without any parti- 
cipation of the President. This Government — the admiration of the world, 
would present the solecism of an executive without any control over execu- 
tive agents, except what might be granted to him by the legislature. We 
are not placed in this unfortunate predicament. The President, under the 
Constitution, has the power of removal. It is a constitutional power, not 
to be controlled by the legislature. It is a power equally sovereign in its 
nature with that of legislation itself. He is a co-ordinate branch of the 
Government, and has the same right to exercise his discretion in removals 
from ofSce, that Congress possess in regard to the enactment of laws. 

This brings me to consider the constitutionality of the third section of the 
bill now depending before us. It provides " that in all nominations made by 
the President to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by removal from 
office, the fact of the removal shall be stated to the Senate at the time that 
the nomination is made, ivith a statement of the reasons for such removal.''^ 

"Whence do we derive our authority to demand his reasons? If the Con- 
stitution has conferred upon him the power of removal, as I think I have 
clearly shown, is it not absolute in its nature and entirely free from the con- 
trol of Congress ? Is he not as independent in tlie exercise of this power as 
Congress in the exercise of any power conferred upon them by the Constitu- 
tion ? Would he not have the same authority to demand from us our reasons 
for rejecting a nomination, as we possess to call upon him for his reasons for 
making a removal ? Might he not say, I am answerable to the American 
people, and to them alone, for the exercise of this power, in the same manner 
that the Senate is for the exercise of any power conferred upon them by the 
Constitution ? 

With all the deference which I feel for the opinions of the Senator from 
Tennessee (Mr. White), I think he has arrived at the conclusion that the third 
section of this bill is constitutional, by blending things together which are in 
their nature entirely distinct. He asks, is it not in the power of Congress to 
create the ofiBce, to define its duties, and to change and vary these duties at 
pleasure ? Granted. May they not, if they believe the office unnecessary, 
repeal the law, and must not the officer fall with it ? Granted. These are 
legislative powers, clearly conferred upon Congress by the Constitution. It 
is then asked, may Congress not prescribe it as the duty of these officers to 



THE "EXPUNGING" EESOLUTION 291 

give reasons for their conduct ? Certainly they may. And why ? Because 
they are the creatures of Congress — they are called into existence by Con- 
gress — and they will cease to exist at the pleasure of Congress, Is this the 
condition of the executive, who is a co-ordinate branch of the Government, 
and who is answerable for his conduct, not to Congress, but to the peo- 
ple of the United States. What right have we to demand reasons from the 
servant of another as to how he performs his duties ? To his own master, 
which, in this particular, is the American people, and to them alone, he is 
responsible. If Congress can command him to give reasons to the Senate for 
his removals, the Senate may judge of the validity of these reasons, and con- 
demn them if they think proper. The executive of the country is thus 
rendered subordinate to the Senate ; — a position in which the Constitution of 
the country never intended to place him. In my opinion, this bill as strongly 
negatives the constitutional power of the President to remove from office, 
without the concurrence of the Senate, as if it were so declared in express 
language. For this reason I shall vote against it. 

In the next session, which commenced in December, 1836, 
Mr. Buchanan delivered a speech which may perhaps he re- 
garded as the ablest of his efforts in the Senate. It related to 
a topic that had long been attended with intense political 
excitement. President Jackson's removal of the public 
deposits from the Bank of the United States furnished to 
the Whig opponents of his administration a means of attack, 
of wdiich thej were not slow to avail themselves. The power- 
ful opposition, which at the time of that occurrence controlled 
the proceedings of the Senate, was led by Mr. Clay, who was 
the defeated Whig candidate for the Presidency at the election 
of 1832. Swaying his party in the Senate with an imperious 
will, and enforcing his determinations by a fascinating elo- 
quence, Mr. Clay, on the 28th of March, 1834, carried a reso- 
lution, which was inscribed on the journal of the Senate in the 
following words : " That the President, in the late executive 
proceedings, in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon 
himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution 
and laws, but in derogation of both." On the 3d of March, 
1835, a resolution introduced by Col. Benton, of Missouri, or- 
dering Mr. Clay's resolution to be "expunged" from the jour- 
nal, came up for consideration. The word "expunged" was 
stricken out by a vote in which the mover and other friends o( 
the administration concurred, so that some other less objection- 



293 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

able phrase might be substituted. But as soon as this word 
was stricken out, Mr. Webster moved to lay the resolution on 
the table, giving notice that he would not withdraw his motion 
" for friend or foe." .The motion was not debatable, and as the 
"Whigs still had a majority, it was carried by a party vote. The 
Democratic Senators then determined that the word " ex- 
punged " should never be again surrendered. At the next 
session they had a majority; and Col. Benton's resolution then 
came up, in a form which directed that Mr, Clay's resolution 
of 1S34: be expunged from the journal of the Senate, by draw- 
ing black lines around it, and writing across its face the words, 

" Expunged by order of the Senate, this day of 

in the year of our Lord 1837." It was upon this proposal, in 
reply to an impassioned speech by Mr. Clay, that Mr. Buchanan, 
on the 16th of January, 1837, addressed the Senate. 

There is one praise to be accorded to this speech, which, con- 
sidering the party character of the struggle, is not a small one. 
Mr. Buchanan separated what was personal and partisan in this 
controversy from the serious questions involved ; and covering 
the whole field of argument upon the really important topics 
in a temperate and courteous but firm discussion, he placed his 
side of the debate upon its true merits. He began by contend- 
ing that the censure, which the Senate had in 1834 passed upon 
the President, was unjust, because he had violated no law in 
ordering the Secretary of the Treasury to remove the public 
deposits from the Bank. He then argued that the Senate had 
committed an infraction of the Constitution, by recording upon 
its journal an accusation that the President had been guilty of 
an ofience for which he might be impeached, and for which it 
would be the duty of the Senate to try him on articles of im- 
peachment, if the House of Representatives should ever pro- 
ceed against him in that manner. In thus prejudging the case, 
by a resolution of mere naked censure, adopted in its legislative 
capacity, the Senate had rendered itself incompetent to perform 
its high judicial function. He concluded his argument by a 
very ingenious and elaborate criticism of the word " expunge," 
arguing that there was a real and solid distinction between a 
physical obliteration of a record, making it impossible there- 
after to be read, and such an annulment of its legal existence 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 293 

as was now proposed, and which, by leaving it in a condition 
to be read, would nevertheless deprive it of all force. It must 
be confessed that this was a very finely drawn distinction ; but 
it was supported by no inconsiderable acwteness and force, and 
with great fairness of reasoning. Col. Benton's resolution was 
adopted by a party vote, and was immediately carried out.* 

The following is a full report of Mr. Buchanan's speech in 
support of the Expunging Resolution : 

Mr. President : — After the able and eloquent display of the Senator from 
Kentucky, (Mr. Clay) who has just resumed his seat, after having so long en- 
chained the attention of his audience, it might be the dictate of prudence for 
me to remain silent. But I feel too deeply my responsibility as an American 
Senator, not to make the attempt to place before the Senate and the country 
the reasons which, in my opinion, will justify the vote which I intend to give 
this day. 

A more grave and solemn question has rarely, if ever, been submitted to 
the Senate of the United States, than the one now under discussion. This 
Senate is now called upon to review its own decision, to rejudge its own jus- 
tice, and to annihilate its own sentence, pronounced against the co-ordi- 
nate executive branch of this Government. On the 28th of March, 1834, 
the American Senate, in the face of the American people, in the face of the 
whole world, by a solemn resolution, pronounced the President of the United 
States to be a violator of the Constitution of his country — of that Constitu- 
tion which he had solemnly sworn " to preserve, protect, and defend." 
Whether we consider the exalted character of the tribunal which pronounced 
this condemnation, or the illustrious object against which it was directed, we 
ought to feel deeply impressed with the high and lasting importance of the 
present proceeding. It is in fact, if not in form, the trial of the Senate, for 
having unjustly and unconstitutionally tried and condemned the President; 
and their accusers are the American people. In this cause I am one of the 
judges. In some respects, it is a painful position for me to occupy. It is 
vain, however, to express unavailing regrets. I must, and shall, firmly and 
sternly, do my duty ; although in the performance of it I may wound the 

* The writer has had occasion to treat of this occurrence more at length in his Life of 
Mr. Webster. He has there expressed the opinion that if the friends of the President, when 
they obtained a majority in the Senate, had contented themselves with adopting a resolution 
exonerating him from the censure passed in 1834, no one could have complained. Probably 
they would have done so, if the circumstances attending the adoption of Mr. Clay's resolution 
had not provoked them to devise what they regarded as an imposing form of stigmatizing 
that act. All that is of any consequence now, in relation to this proceeding, turns upon the 
contradiction between the constitutional requirement to "keep" a legislative journal, and a 
subsequent obliteration or cancellation of any part of it, by any means whatever. On this 
subject, see the protest read in the Senate by Mr. Webster, in his Life, by the present writer, 
vol. I, p. &45, et seq. 



294 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

feelings of gentlemen whom I respect and esteem. I shall proceed no 
farther than the occasion demands, and will, therefore, justify. 

Who was the President of the United States, against whom this sentence 
has been pronounced ? Andrew Jackson — a name which every American 
mother, after the party strife which agitates us for the present moment shall 
have passed away, will, during all the generations which this Republic is des- 
tined to endure, teach her infant to lisp with that of the venerated name of 
Washington. The one was the founder, the other the preserver, of the liber- 
ties of his country. 

If President Jackson has been guilty of violating the Constitution of the 
United States, let impartial justice take its course. I admit that it is no jus- 
tification for such a crime, that his long life has been more distinguished by 
acts of disinterested patriotism than that of any American citizen now living. 
It is no justification that the honesty of his heart and the purity of his in- 
tentions have become proverbial, even amongst his political enemies. It is 
no justification that in the hour of danger, and in the day of battle, he has 
been his country's shield. If he has been guilty, let his name be " damned to 
everlasting fame," with those of Ccesar and of Napoleon. 

If, on the other hand, he is pure and immaculate from the charge, let us be 
swift to do him justice, and to blot out the foul stigma which the Senate has 
placed upon his character. If we arc not, he may go down to the grave in 
doubt as to what may be the final judgment of his country. In any event, 
he must soon retire to the shades of private life. Shall we, then, suffer his 
oflficial term to expire, without first doing him justice ? It may be said of me, 
as it has already been said of other Senators, that I am one of the gross 
adulators of the President. But, sir, I have never said thus much of him 
whilst he was in the meridian of his power. Now that his political sun is 
nearly set, I feel myself at liberty to pour forth my grateful feelings, as an 
American citizen, to a man who has done so much for his country. I have 
never, for myself, either directly or indirectly, solicited office at his hands; 
and my character must greatly change, if I should ever do so from any of his 
successors. If I should bestow upon him the meed of my poor praise, it 
springs from an impulse far different from that which has been attributed to 
the majority on this floor. I speak as an independent freeman and American 
Senator ; and I feel proud now to have the opportunity of raising my voice 
in his defence. 

On the 28th day of March, 1834, the Senate of the United States resolved, 
"that the President, in the late executive proceedings, in relation to the pub- 
lic revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by 
the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both." 

In discussing this subject, I shall undertake to prove, first, that this resolu- 
tion is unjust ; secondly, that it is unconstitutional ; and in the last place, that 
it ought to be expunged from our journals, in the manner proposed by the 
Senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton). 

First, then, it is unjust. On this branch of the subject I had intended to 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 295 

confine myself to a bare expression of my own decided opinion. This point 
has been so often and so ably discussed, that it is impossible for me to cast 
any new light upon it. But as it is my intention to follow the footsteps of 
the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) wherever they may lead, I must again 
tread the ground which has been so often trodden. As the Senator, how- 
ever, has confined himself to a mere passing reference to the topics which this 
head presents, I shall, in this particular, follow his example. 

Although the resolution condemning the President is vague and general in 
its terms, yet we all know that it was founded upon his removal of the pub- 
lic deposits from the Bank of the United States. The Senator from Ken- 
tucky has contended that this act was a violation of law. And why ? Be- 
cause, says he, it is well known that the public money was secure in that in- 
stitution ; and by its charter the pubhc deposits could not be removed from 
it, unless under a just apprehension that they were in danger. Now, sir, I 
admit that if the President had no right to remove these deposits, except for 
the sole reason that their safety was in danger, the Senator has established 
his position. But what is the fact ? Was the Government thus restricted by 
the terms of the bank charter ? I answer, no. Such a limitation is nowhere 
to be found in it. Let me read the sixteenth section, which is the only one 
relating to the subject. It enacts, " that the deposits of the money of the 
United States, in places in which the said bank and branches thereof may be 
established, shall be made in said bank or branches thereof, unless the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury shall at any other time otherwise order and direct ; in 
which case the Secretary of the Treasury shall immediately lay before Con- 
gress, if in session, and, if not, immediately after the commencement of the 
next session, the reasons of such order or direction." 

Is not the authority thus conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury as 
broad and as ample as the English language will admit? Where is the limi- 
tation, where the restriction? One might have supposed from the argu- 
ment of the Senator from Kentucky, that the charter restricted the Secretary 
of the Treasury from removing the deposits, unless he behoved them to be 
insecure in the Bank of the United States ; but the language of the law itself 
completely refutes his argument. They were to remain in the Bank of the 
United States, " unless the Secretary of the Treasury shall at any time other- 
wise order and direct." 

The sole hmitation upon the discretion of that officer was his immediate 
and direct responsibility to Congress. To us he was bound to render his 
reasons for removing the deposits. We, and we alone, are constituted the 
judges as to the sufficiency of these reasons. 

It would be an easy task to prove that the authors of the bank charter 
acted wisely in not limiting the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury 
over the deposits to the single case of their apprehended insecurity. We 
may imagine many other reasons which would have rendered their removal 
both wise and expedient. But I forbear ; especially as the case now before 
the Senate presents as striking an illustration of tliis proposition as I could 



296 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

possibly imagine. Upon what principle, then, do I justify the removal of the 
deposits ? 

The Bank of the United States had determined to apply for a recharter at 
the session of Congress immediately preceding the last Presidential election. 
Preparatory to this application, and whilst it was pending, in the short space 
of sixteen months, it had increased its loans more than twenty-eight million 
dollars. They rose from forty-two millions to seventy millions between the 
last of December, 1830, and the first of May, 1832. Whilst this boasted 
regulator of the currency was thus expanding its discounts, all the local 
banks followed the example. The impulse of self-interest urged them to 
pursue this course. A delusive prosperity was thus spread over the land. 
Money everywhere became plenty. The bank was regarded as the beneficent 
parent, who was pouring her money out into the laps of her children. She 
thought herself wise and provident in thus rendering herself popular. The re- 
charter passed both Houses of Congress by triumphant majorities. But then 
came " the frost, the killing frost." It was not so easy to propitiate " the Old 
Roman." Although he well knew the power and influence which the bank 
could exert against him at the then approaching Presidential election, he cast 
such considerations to the winds. He vetoed the bill, and in the most solemn 
manner placed himself for trial upon this question before the American people. 

From that moment the faith of many of his former friends began to grow 
cold. The bank openly took the field against his re-election. It expended 
large sums in subsidizing editors, and in circulating pamphlets, and papers, 
and speeches, throughout the Union, calculated to inflame the public mind 
against the President. I merely glance at these things. 

Let us pause for a single moment to consider the consequences of such 
conduct. What right had the bank, as a corporation, to enter the arena of 
politics for the purpose of defending itself, and attacking the President? 
Whilst I freely admit that each individual stockholder possessed the same 
rights, in this respect, as every other American citizen, I pray you to consider 
what a dangerous precedent the bank has thus established. Our banks now 
number nearly a thousand, and our other chartered institutions are almost in- 
numerable. If all these corporations are to be justified in using their corpor- 
ate funds for the purpose of influencing elections ; of elevating their political 
friends, and crushing their political foes, our condition is truly deplorable. 
"We shall thus introduce into the State a new, a dangerous, and an alarming 
power, the effects of which no man can anticipate. Watchful jealousy is the 
price which a free people must ever pay for their liberties; and this jealousy 
should be Argus-eyed in watching the political movements of corporations. 

After the bank had been defeated in the Presidential election, it adopted a 
new course of policy. What it had been unable to accomplish by making 
money plenty, it determined it would wrest from the sufferings of the people 
by making money scarce. Pressure and panic then became its weapons; and 
with these it was determined, if possible, to extort a recharter from the 
American people. It commenced this warfare upon the interests of the 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 297 

country about the first of August, 1833. la two short months it decreased its 
loans more than four millions of dollars, whilst the deposits of the Government 
with it had increased, during the same period, two millions and a quarter. I 
speak in round numbers. It was then in the act of reducing its discounts at 
the rate of two millions of dollars per month. 

The State banks had expanded their loans with the former expansion of 
the Bank of the United States, It now became necessary to contract them. 
The severest pressure began to be felt everywhere. Had the Bank of the 
United States been permitted a short time longer to proceed in this course, 
fortified as it was with the millions of the Government which it held on 
deposit, a scene of almost universal bankruptcy and insolvency must have 
been presented in our commercial cities. It thus became absolutely necessary 
for the President either to deprive the bank of the public deposits, as the only 
means of protecting the State banks, and through them the people, from these 
impending evils, or calmly to look on and see it spreading ruin throughout 
the land. It was necessary for him to adopt this policy for the purpose of 
preventing a universal derangement of the currency, a general sacrifice of 
property, and, as an inevitable consequence, the recharter of this institution. 

By the removal of the deposits, he struck a blow against the bank from 
which it has never since recovered. This was the club of Hercules with 
which he slew the hydra. This was the master-stroke by which he prostrated 
what a large majority of the American people believe to have been a corrupt 
and a corrupting institution. For this he is not only justified, but deserves 
the eternal gratitude of his country. For this the Senate have condemned 
him ; but the people of the United States have hailed him as a deliverer. 

It has been said by the Senator from Kentucky, that the President, by 
removing the deposits from the Bank of the United States, united in his own 
hands the power of the purse of the nation with that of the sword. I think 
it is not difficult to answer this argument. What was to become of the 
public money, in case it had been removed from the Bank of the United 
States, under its charter, for the cause which the Senator himself deems justi- 
fiable? Why, sir, it would then have been immediately remitted to the 
guardianship of those laws under which it had been protected before the 
Bank of the United States was called into existence. Such was the present 
case. In regard to this point, no matter whether the cause of removal were 
sufficient or not, the moment the deposits were actually removed they became 
subject to the pre-existing laws, and not to the arbitrary will of the President. 

The Senator from Kentucky has contended that the President violated the 
Constitution and the laws, by dismissing Mr. Duane from office because he 
would not remove the deposits, and by appointing Mr. Taney to accomplish 
this purpose. I shall not discuss at any length the power of removal. It is 
now too late in the day to question it. That the executive possesses this 
power was decided by the first Congress. It has often since been discussed 
and decided in the same manner, and it has been exercised by every Presi- 
dent of the United States. The President is bound by the Constitution to 



298 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

" take care that the laws be faithfully executed." If he cannot remove hia 
executive officers, it is impossible that he can perform this duty. Every 
inferior oiEcer might set up for himself; might violate the laws of the 
country, and put him at defiance, whilst he would remain perfectly powerless. 
He could not arrest their career. A foreign minister might be betraying and 
disgracing the nation abroad, without any power to recall him until the next 
meeting of the Senate. This construction of the Constitution involves so 
many dangers and so many absurdities, that it could not be maintained for a 
moment, even if there had not been a constant practice against it of ahnost 
half a century. 

But it is contended by the Senator that the Secretary of the Treasury is a 
sort of independent power in the State, and is released from the control of 
the executive. And why ? Simply because he is directed by law to make 
his annual report to Congress and not to the President. If this position be 
correct, then it necessarily follows that the executive is released from the 
obligation of taking care that the numerous and important acts of Congress 
regulating the fiscal concerns of the country shall be faithfully executed. The 
Secretary of the Treasury is thus made independent of his control. What 
would be the position of this officer under such a construction of the Consti- 
tution and laws, it would be very difficult to decide. And this wonderful 
transformation of his character has arisen from the mere circumstance that 
Congress have by law directed him to make an annual report to them I No, 
sir • the executive is responsible to Congress for the faithful execution of all 
the laws ; and if the present or any other President should prove faithless to 
his high trust, the present Senate, notwithstanding all which has been said, 
would be as ready as their predecessors to inflict condign punishment upon 
him, in the mode pointed out by the Constitution. 

I have now arrived at the great question of the constitutional power of 
the Senate to adopt the resolution of March, 1834. It is my firm conviction 
that the Senate possesses no such power ; and it is now my purpose to estab- 
lish this position. The decision on this point must depend upon a true answer 
to the question : Does this resolution contain any impeachable charge against 
the President ? If it does, I trust I shall demonstrate that the Senate violated 
its constitutional duty in proceeding to condemn him in this manner. I shall 
again read the resolution : 

" Resolved^ That the President, in the late executive proceedings in rela- 
tion to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power 
not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both." 

Tliis language is brief and comprehensive. It comes at once to the point. 
It bears a striking impress of the character of the Senator from Kentucky. 
Does it charge an impeachable offence against the President ? 

The fourth section of the second article of the Constitution declares that the 
"President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be 
removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, 
or other high crimes and misdemeanors." 



THE "EXPUNGING" BESOLUTION. 299 

It has been contended that this condemnatory resolution contains no im- 
peachable offence, because it charges no criminal intention against the Presi- 
dent; and I admit that it does not attribute to him any corrupt motive in 
express words. Is this sufficient to convince the judgment of any impartial 
man that none was intended ? Let us, for a few moments, examine this 
proposition. If it be well founded, the Senate may for ever hereafter usurp the 
power of trying, condemning, and destroying any officer of the Government, 
without affording him the slightest opportunity of being heard in his defence. 
They may abuse their power, and prostrate any object of their vengeance. It 
seems we have now made the discovery, that the Senate are authorized to 
exert this tremendous power — that they may thus assume to themselves the 
office both of accuser and of judge, provided the indictment contains no 
express allegation of a criminal intention. The President, or any officer 
of the Government, may be denounced by the Senate as a violator of the 
Constitution of his country, — as derelict in the performance of his public 
duties, provided there is no express imputation of an improper motive. The 
characters of men whose reputation is dearer to them than their lives may 
thus be destroyed. They may be held up to public execration by the omis- 
sion of a few formal words. The condemnation of the Senate carries with it 
such a moral power, that perhaps there is no man in the United States, ex- 
cept Andrew Jackson, who could have resisted its force. No, sir ; such an 
argument can never command conviction. That which we have no power 
to do directly, we can never accomplish by indirect means. We cannot by 
resolution convict a man of an impeachable offence, merely because we may 
omit the formal words of an impeachment. We must regard the substance 
of things, and not the mere form. 

But again. Although a criminal intention be not charged, in so many 
words, by this resolution, yet its language, even without the attendant cir- 
cumstances, clearly conveys this meaning. The President is charged with 
having "assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the 
Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both." " Assumed upon him- 
self." What is the plain palpable meaning of this phrase connected with 
what precedes and follows ? Is it not " to arrogate," " to claim or seize un- 
justly." These are two of the first meanings of the word assume, according 
to the lexicographers. To assume upon one's self is a mode of expression which 
is rarely taken in a good sense. As it is used here, I ask if any man of plain 
common understanding, after reading this resolution, would ever arrive at the 
conclusion that any Senator voted for it under the impression that the Presi- 
dent was innocent of any improper intention, and that he violated the Consti- 
tution from mere mistake and from pure motives ? The common sense of man- 
kind revolts at the idea. How can it be contended, for a single moment, that 
you can denounce the President as a man who had "assumed upon himself" 
the power of violating the laws and the Constitution of his country, and in 
the same breath declare that you had not the least intention to criminate him, 
and that your language was altogether inoffensive. The two propositions are 
manifestly inconsistent. 



300 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

But I go one step farther. If we were sitting as a court of impeachment, 
and the bare proposition were established to our satisfaction that the Presi- 
dent had, in violation of the Constitution and the laws, withdrawn the public 
revenue of the country from the depository to whose charge Congress had 
committed it, and assumed the control over it himself, we would be bound to 
convict him of a high ofl&cial misdemeanor. Under such circumstances, we 
should be bound to infer a criminal intention from this illegal and unconstitu- 
tional act. Criminal justice could never be administered, — society could not 
exist, if the tribunals of the country should not attribute evil motives to illegal 
and unconstitutional conduct. Omniscience alone can examine the heart. 
When poor frail man is placed in the judgment-seat, he must infer the inten- 
tions of the accused from his actions. That " the tree is known by its fruits " 
is an axiom which we have derived from the fountain of all truth. Does a 
poor, naked, hungry wretch, at this inclement season of the year, take from 
my pocket a single dollar ; the law infers a criminal intent, and he must be 
convicted and punished as a thief, though he may have been actuated by no 
other motive than that of saving his wife and his children from starvation. 
And shall a different rule be applied to the President of the United States ? 
Shall it be said of a man elevated to the highest station on earth, for his 
wisdom, his integrity, and his virtues, with all his constitutional advisers 
around him, when he violates the Constitution of his country and usurps the 
control over its entire revenue, that he may successfully defend himself by 
declaring he had done this deed without any criminal intention ? No, sir ; 
in such a case, above all others, the criminal intention must be inferred from 
the unconstitutional exercise of high and dangerous powers. The safety of 
the Republic demands that the President of the United States should never 
shield himself behind such flimsy pretexts. This resolution, therefore, al- 
though it may not have assumed the form of an article of impeachment, 
possesses all the substance. 

It was my fate some years ago to have assisted as a manager, in behalf 
of the House of Eepresentatives, in the trial of an impeachment before this 
body. It then became my duty to examine all the precedents in such cases 
which had occurred under our Government, since the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution. On that occasion, I found one which has a strong bearing upon 
this question. I refer to the case of Judge Pickering. He was tried and 
condemned by the Senate upon all the four articles exhibited against him ; 
although the first three contained no other charge than that of making deci- 
sions contrary to law, in a cause involving a mere question of property, and 
then refusing to grant the party injured an appeal from his decision, to which 
he Avas entitled. From the clear violation of law in this case, the Senate 
must have inferred an impure and improper motive. 

If any thing further were wanting to prove that the resolution of the 
Senate contained a criminal and impeachable charge against the President, it 
might be demonstrated from all the circumstances attending the transaction. 
Whilst this resolution was in progress through the Senate, the Bank of the 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 301 

United States was employed in producing panic and pressure throughout the 
land. Much actual suffering was experienced by the people ; and where that 
did not exist, they dreaded unknown and awful calamities. Confidence be- 
tween man and man was at an end. There was a fearful pause in the busi- 
ness of the country. We were then engaged in the most violent party 
conflict recorded in our annals. To use the language of the Senator from 
Kentucky, we were in the midst of a revolution. On the one side it was 
contended that the power over the purse of the nation had been usurped by 
the President ; that in his own person he had united this power with that of 
the sword, and that the liberties of the people were gone, unless he could be 
arrested in his mad career. On the other hand, the friends of the President 
maintained that the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
States was an act of stern justice to the people; that it was strictly legal and 
constitutional ; that he was impelled to it by the highest and purest principles 
of patriotism ; and that it was the only means of prostrating an institution 
which threatened the destruction of our dearest rights and liberties. Durinfi- 
this terrific conflict pubhc indignation was aroused to such a degree, that the 
President received a great number of anonymous letters, threatening him 
with assassination unless he should restore the deposits. 

It was during the pendency of this conflict throughout the country, that 
the Senator from Kentucky thought proper, on the 26th December, 1833 to 
present his condemnatory resolution to the Senate. And here, sir, permit 
me to say that I do not believe there was any corrupt connection between 
any Senator upon this floor and the Bank of the United States. But it was 
at this inauspicious moment that the resolution was introduced. How was it 
supported by the Senator from Kentucky ? He told us that a revolution had 
already commenced. He told us that by the 3d of March, 1837, if the pro- 
gress of innovation should continue, there would be scarcely a vestige remain- 
ing of the Government and policy as they had existed prior to the 3d March, 
1829. That in a term of years a little more than that which was required to 
establish our liberties, the Government would be transformed into an elective 
monarchy — the worst of all forms of government. He compared the meas- 
ure adopted by General Jackson with the conduct of the usurping Cffisar, who 
after he had overrun Italy in sixty days, and conquered the liberties of his 
native country, terrified the Tribune Metellus, who guarded the treasury of 
the Roman people, and seized it by open force. He declared that the Presi- 
dent had proclaimed an open, palpable, and daring usurpation. He concluded 
by asserting that the premonitory symptoms of despotism were upon us ; and 
if Congress did not apply an instantaneous and effective remedy, the fatal 
collapse would soon come on, and we should die— ignobly die I base, mean, 
and abject slaves, the scorn and contempt of mankind, unpitied, unwept, and 
unmourned. What a spectacle was then presented in this Chamber ! We 
are told, in the reports of the day, that, when he took his seat, there was re- 
peated and loud applause in the galleries. This, it will be remembered, was 
the introductory speech of the Senator. In my opinion, it was one of the 



302 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

ablest and most eloquent of all his able and eloquent speeches. He was then 
riding upon the whirlwind and directing the storm. At the time I read it, 
for I was not then in the Senate, it reminded me of the able, the vindictive, 
and the eloquent appeal of Mr. Burke before the House of Lords, on the im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings, in which he denounced that governor-gen- 
eral as the ravager and oppressor of India, and the scourge of the millions 
who had been placed under his authority. 

And yet, we are now told that this resolution did not intend to impute 
any criminal motive to the President. That he was a good old man, though 
not a good constitutional lawyer : and that he knew better how to wield the 
sword than to construe the Constitution. 

[Mr. Clay here rose to explain. He said, "I never have said and never 
will say, that personally I acquitted the President of any improper intention. 
I lament that I cannot say it. But what I did say, was that the act of the 
Senate of 1834 is free from the imputation of any criminal motives.] 

Sir, said Mr. B., this avowal is in character with the frank and manly 
nature of the Senator from Kentucky. It is no more than what I expected 
from him. The imputation of any improper motive to the President has been 
again and again disclaimed by other Senators upon this floor. The Senator 
from Kentucky has now boldly come out in his true colors, and avows the 
principles which he held at the time. He acknowledges that he did not acquit 
the President from improper intentions, when charging him with a violation 
of the Constitution of his country. 

This trial of the President before the Senate, continued for three months. 
During this whole period, instead of the evidence which a judicial tribunal 
ought to receive, exciting memorials, signed by vast numbers of the people, 
and well calculated to inflame the passions of his judges, were daily pouring 
in upon the Senate. He was denounced upon this floor by every odious 
epithet which belongs to tyrants. Finally, the obnoxious resolution was 
adopted by the vote of the Senate, on the 28th day of March, 1834. After 
the exposition which I have made, can any impartial mind doubt but that 
this resolution intended to charge against the President a wilful and daring 
violation of the Constitution and the laws? I think not. 

The Senator from Kentucky has argued, with his usual power, that the 
functions of the Senate, acting in a legislative capacity, are not to be restricted, 
because it is possible that the same question, in another form, may come 
before us judicially. I concur in the truth and justice of this position. We 
must perform our legislative duties; and if, in the investigation of facts, hav- 
ing legislation distinctly in view, we should incidentally be led to the investi- 
gation of criminal charges, it is a necessity imposed upon us by our condition, 
from which we cannot escape. It results from the varying nature of our duties, 
and not from our own will. I admit that it would be difficult to mark the 
precise line which separates our legislative from our judicial functions. I shall 
not attempt it. In many cases, from necessity, they are in some degree 
intermingled. The present resolution, however, stands far in advance of this 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 303 

line. It is placed in bold relief, and is clear of all such difiiculties. It is a 
mere naked resolution of censure. It refers solely to the past conduct of 
the President, and condemns it in the strongest terms, without even pro- 
posing any act of legislation by which the evil may be remedied hereafter. 
It was judgment upon the past alone ; not prevention for the future. Nay, 
more : the resolution is so vague and general in its terms that it is impossible 
to ascertain from its face the cause of the President's condemnation. The 
Senate have resolved that the executive " has assumed upon himself authority 
and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of 
both." What is the specification under this charge ? Why, that he has acted 
thus, " in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue ? " 
What executive proceedings ? The resolution leaves us entirely in the dark 
upon this subject. How could any legislation spring from such a resolution ? 
It is impossible. None such was ever attempted. 

If the resolution had preserved its original phraseology — if it had con- 
demned the President for dismissing one Secretary of the Treasury because 
he would not remove the deposits, and for appointing his successor to effect 
this purpose, the Senator might then have contended that the evil was 
distinctly pointed out ; and, although no legislation was proposed, the rem- 
edy might be applied hereafter. But he has deprived himself even of this 
feeble argument. He has left us upon an ocean of uncertainty, without 
chart or compass. " The late executive proceedings in relation to the reve- 
nue," is a phrase of the most general and indefinite character. Every Senator 
who voted in favor of this resolution may have acted upon different princi- 
ples. To procure its passage, nothing more was necessary than that a majority 
should unite in the conclusion that the President had violated the Constitu- 
tion and the laws in some one or other of his numerous acts in relation to 
the public revenue. The views of Senators constituting the majority may 
have varied from each other to any conceivable extent; and yet they may 
have united in the final vote. That this was the fact to a considerable ex- 
tent, I have always understood. It is utterly impossible, either that such a 
proceeding could ever have been intended to become the basis of legislation, 
or that legislative action could have ever sprung from such a source. 

I flatter myself, then, I have succeeded in proving that this resolution 
charged the President with a high official misdemeanor, wholly disconnected 
from legislation, which, if true, ought to have subjected him to impeachment. 

This brings me directly to the question, had the Senate any power, under 
the Constitution, to adopt such a resolution ? In other words, can the Senate 
condemn a public officer by a simple resolution, for an offence which would 
subject him to an impeachment ? To state the proposition, is to answer this 
question in the negative. Dreadful would be the consequences if we posssss 
and should exercise such a power. 

This body is invested with high and responsible powers of a legislative, an 
executive, and a judicial character. No person can enter it until he has at- 
tained a mature age. Our term of service is longer than that of any other 



304 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

elective functionary. If Senators will have it so, it is the most aristocratic 
branch of our Government. For what purpose did the framers of the Con- 
stitution confer upon it these varied and important powers, and this long 
tenure of office ? The answer is plain. It was placed in this secure and 
elevated position that it might be above the storms of faction which so often 
inflame the passions of men. It never was intended to be an arena for polit- 
ical gladiators. Until the second session of the third Congress, the Senate 
always sat with closed doors, except in the single instance when the eligibiUty 
of Mr. Gallatin to a seat in the body was the subject of discussion. Of this 
particular practice, however, I cannot approve. I merely state it, to show 
the intention of those who formed the Constitution. I was informed by one 
of the most eminent statesmen and Senators which this country has ever 
produced, now no more (the late Mr. King), that for some years after the 
Federal Government commenced its operation, the debates of the Senate 
resembled conversations rather than speeches, and that it originated but few 
legislative measures. Senators were then critics rather than authors in legis- 
lation. Whether its gain in eloquence, since it has become a popular assem- 
bly, and since the sound of thundering applause has been heard in our galleries 
at the denunciation of the President, has been an equivalent for its loss in 
true dignity, may well be doubted. To give this body its just influence with 
the people, it ought to preserve itself as free as possible from angry political 
discussions. In the performance of our executive duties, in the ratification 
of treaties, and in the confirmation of nominations, the Constitution has con- 
nected us with the executive. The efficient and successful administration of 
the Government therefore requires that we should move on together in as 
much harmony as may be consistent with the independent exercise of our 
respective functions. 

But above all, we should be the most cautious in guarding our judicial 
character from suspicion. "We constitute the high court of impeachment of 
this nation, before which every officer of the Government may be arraigned. 
To this tribunal is committed the character of men whose character is far 
dearer to them than their lives. We should be the rock standing in the 
midst of the ocean, for the purpose of affording a shelter to the faithful officer 
from unjust persecution, against which the billows might dash themselves in 
vain. Whilst we are a terror to evil doers, we should be a praise to those 
who do well. We should never voluntarily perform any act which might 
prejudice our judgment, or render us suspected as a judicial tribunal. More 
especially, when the President of the United States is arraigned at the bar of 
public opinion for offences which might subject him to an impeachment, we 
should remain not only chaste but unsuspected. Better, infinitely better, 
would it be for us not to manifest our feeling, even in a case in which we 
were morally certain the House of Representatives would not prefer before 
us articles of impeachment, than to reach the object of our disapprobation by 
a usurpation of their rights. It is true that when the Senate passed the reso- 
lution condemning the President, a majority in the House were of a different 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 305 

opinion. But the next elections might have changed that majority into a 
minority. The House might tlien have voted articles of impeachment against 
the President. Under such circumstances, I pray you to consider in vyhat a 
condition the Senate would have been placed. They had already prejudged 
the case. They had already convicted the President, and denounced him 
to the world as a violator of the Constitution. In criminal prosecutions, even 
against the greatest malefactor, if a juror has prejudged the cause, he cannot 
enter the jury box. The Senate had rendered itself wholly incompetent in 
this case to perform its highest judicial functions. The trial of the President, 
had articles of impeachment been preferred against him, would have been 
but a solemn mockery of justice. 

The Constitution of the United States has carefully provided against such 
an enormous evil, by declaring that " the House of Representatives shall have 
the sole power of impeachment," and " the Senate shall have the sole power 
to try all impeachments." Until the accused is brought before us by the 
House, it is a manifest violation of our solemn duty to condemn him by a 
resolution. 

If a court of criminal jurisdiction, without any indictment having been 
found by a grand jury, without having given the defendant notice to appear, 
without having afforded him an opportunity of cross-examining the witnesses 
against him, and making his defence, should resolve that he was guilty of a 
high crime, and place this conviction upon their records, all mankind would 
exclaim against the injustice and unconstitutionality of the act. Wherein 
consists the difference between this case and the condemnation of the Presi- 
dent ? In nothing, except that such a conviction by the Senate, on account 
of its exalted character, would fall with tenfold force upon its object. I have 
often been astonished, notwithstanding the extended and well deserved popu- 
larity of General Jackson, that the moral influence of this condemnation by 
the Senate had not crushed him. With what tremendous effect might this 
assumed power of the Senate be used to blast the reputation of any man 
who might fall under its displeasure 1 The precedent is extremely dangerous ; 
and the American people have wisely determined to blot it out forever. 

It is painful to reflect what might have been the condition of the country, 
if at the inauspicious moment of the passage of the resolution against the 
President, its interests and its honor had rendered it necessary to engage in a 
foreign war. The fearful consequences of such a condition, at such a moment, 
must strike every mind. Would the Senate then have confided to the Presi- 
dent the necessary power to defend the country ? Where could the sinews 
of war have been found ? In what condition was this body, at that moment, 
to act upon an important treaty negotiated by the President, or upon any 
of his nominations? But I forbear to enlarge upon this topic. 

I have now arrived at the last point in this discussion. Do the Senate 

possess the power, under the Constitution, of expunging the resolution of 

March, 1834, from their journals, in the manner proposed by the Senator from 

Missouri? (Mr. Benton.) I cheerfully admit we must show that this is not 

L— 20 



306 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

contrary to the Constitution ; for we can never redress one violation of that 
instrument by committing another. Before I proceed to this branch of the 
subject, I shall put myself right, by a brief historical reminiscence. I entered 
the Senate in December, 1834, fresh from the ranks of the people, without 
the slightest feeling of hostihty against any Senator on this floor. I then 
thought that the resolution of the Senator from Missouri was too severe in 
proposing to expunge. Although I was anxious to record, in strong terms, 
my entire disapprobation of the resolution of March, 1834, yet I was willing 
to accomplish this object without doing more violence to the feelings of my 
associates on this floor, than was absolutely necessary to justify the President. 
Actuated by these friendly motives, I exerted all my little influence with the 
Senator from Missouri, to induce him to abandon the word expunge, and sub- 
stitute some others in its place. I knew that this word was exceedingly ob- 
noxious to the Senators who had voted for the former resolution. Other 
friends of his also exerted their influence ; and at length his kindly feelings 
prevailed, and he consented to abandon that word, although it was peculiarly 
dear to him. I speak from my own knowledge. " All which I saw and part 
of which I was." 

The resolution of the Senator from Missouri came before the Senate on the 
3d of March, 1835. Under it the resolution of March, 1834, was " ordered 
to be expunged from the journal," for reasons appearing on its face, Avhich I 
need not enumerate. The Senator from Tennessee (Mr. White) moved to 
amend the resolution of the Senator from Missouri, by striking out the order 
to expunge, with the reasons for it, and inserting in their stead the words, 
"rescinded, reversed, repealed, and declared to be null and void." Some 
difierence of opinion then arose among the friends of the Administration as to 
the words which should be substituted in place of the order to expunge. For 
the purpose of leaving this question perfectly open, you, sir, (Mr. King, of 
Alabama, was in the chair,) then moved to amend the original motion of Mr. 
Benton, by striking out the words, " ordered to be expunged from the journal 
of the Senate." This motion prevailed, on the ayes and noes, by a vote of 
39 to 7 ; and amongst the ayes, the name of the Senator from Missouri is 
recorded. The resolution was thus left a blank, in its most essential features, 
ready to be filled up as the Senate might direct. The era of good feeling, in 
regard to this subject had commenced. It was nipped in the bud, however, 
by the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster). Whilst the resolution 
was still in blank, he rose in his place, and proclaimed the triumph of the 
Constitution, by the vote to strike out the word expunge, and then moved to 
lay the resolution on the table, declaring that he would neither withdraw his 
motion for friend nor foe. This motion precluded all amendment and all de- 
bate. It prevailed by a party vote ; and thus we were left with our resolu- 
tion a blank. Such was the manner in which the Senators in opposition re- 
ceived our advances of courtesy and kindness, in the moment of their strength 
and our weakness. Had the Senator from Massachusetts suffered us to pro- 
ceed but for five minutes, we should have filled up the blank in the resolution. 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 307 

It would then have assumed a distinct form, and they would never after- 
wards have heard of the word expunge. We should have been content with 
the words " rescinded, reversed, repealed, and declared to be null and void," 
But the conduct of the Senator from Massachusetts on that occasion, and that 
of the party with wliich he acted, roused the indignation of every friend of 
the Administration on this floor. We then determined that the word expunge 
should never again be surrendered. 

The Senator from Kentucky has introduced a precedent from the proceed- 
ings of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, for the purpose of 
proving that we have no right to adopt this resolution. To this I can have 
no possible objection. But I can tell the Senator, if I were convinced that I 
had voted wrong, when comparatively a boy, more than twenty years ago, 
the fear of being termed inconsistent would not now deter me from voting 
right upon the same question. I do not, however, repent of my vote upon 
that occasion. I would now vote in the same manner, under similar circum- 
stances. I should not vote to expunge, under any circumstances, any pro- 
ceeding from the journals by obliterating the record. If I do not prove 
before I take my seat, that the case in the Legislature of Pennsylvania was 
essentially different from that now before the Senate, I shall agree to be pro- 
claimed inconsistent and time-serving. 

It was my settled conviction at the commencement of the last session of 
Congress, that the Senate had no power to obliterate their journal. This was 
shaken, but not removed, by the argument of the Senator from Louisiana, 
(Mr. Porter), who confessedly made the ablest speech on the other side of the 
question. The Constitution declares that " each House shall keep a journal 
of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such 
parts as may in their judgment require secrecy." What was the position 
which that Senator then attempted to maintain ? In order to prove that we 
had no power to obliterate or destroy our journals, he thought it necessary to 
contend that the word " keep " as used in the Constitution, means both to 
record and to preserve. This appeared to me to be a mere begging of the 
question. 

I shall attempt no definition of the word " keep." At least since the days 
of Plato, we know that definitions have been dangerous. Yet I think that 
the meaning of this word, as apphed to the subject matter, is so plain that he 
who runs may read. If I direct my agent to keep a journal of his proceed- 
ings, and publish the same, my palpable meaning is, that he shall write these 
proceedings down, from day to day, and pubUsh what he has written for 
general information. After he has obeyed my commands, after he has kept 
his journal, and published it to the world, he has executed the essential part 
of the trust confided to him. What becomes of this original manuscript jour- 
nal afterwards, is a matter of total indifference. So in regard to the manu- 
script journals of either House of Congress: after more than a thousand 
copies have been printed, and published, and distributed over the Union, it is 
a matter of not the least importance what disposition may be made of them. 



30S LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

They have answered their purpose, and, in any practical view, become use- 
less. If they vi^ere burnt, or otherwise destroyed, it would not be an event 
of the slightest public consequence. Such indifference has prevailed upon 
this subject, that these journals have been considered, in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, as so much waste paper, and, during a period of thirty-four years 
after the organization of the Grovernment, they were actually destroyed. 
From this circumstance, no public or private inconvenience has been or 
ever can be sustained ; because our printed journals are received in evi- 
dence in all courts of justice in the same manner as if the originals were 
produced. 

The Senator from Louisiana has discovered that to " keep " means both 
"to record" and "to preserve." But can you give this, or any other word 
in the English language, two distinct and independent meanings at the same 
time, as applied to the same subject ? I think not. From the imperfection 
of human language, from the impossibility of having appropriate words to 
express every idea, the same word, as applied to different subjects, has a 
variety of significations. As applied to any one subject, it cannot, at the 
same time, convey two distinct meanings. In the Constitution it must mean 
either "to write down," or "to preserve." It cannot have both significations. 
Let Senators, then, take their choice. If it signifies " to write down," as it 
unquestionably does, what becomes of the constitutional injunction to pre- 
serve ? The truth is, that the Constitution has not provided what shall be 
done with the manuscript journal, after it has served the purposes for which 
it was called into existence. When it has been published to the people of 
the United States, for whose use it was ordered to be kept ; after it has thus 
been perpetuated, and they have been furnished with the means of judging 
of the public conduct of their public servants, it ceases to be an object of the 
least importance. Whether it be thrown into the garret of the Capitol with 
other useless lumber, or be destroyed, is a matter of no public interest. It 
has probably never once been referred to in the history of our Governmery;. If 
it should ever be determined to be a violation of the Constitution to obhterate 
or destroy this manuscript journal, it must be upon difierent principles from 
those which have been urged in this debate. My own impression is, that as 
the framers of the Constitution have directed us to keep a journal, a construc- 
tive duty may be impUed from this command, which would forbid us to 
obliterate or destroy it. Under this impression, I should vote, as I did 
twenty years ago, in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, against any proposition 
actually to expunge any part of the journal. But waiving this unprofitable 
discussion, let us proceed to the real point in controversy. 

Is any such proceeding as that of actually expunging the journal, pro- 
posed by the resolution of the Senator from Missouri ? I answer, no such 
thing. If the Constitution had, in express terms, directed us to record and to 
preserve a journal of our proceedings, there is nothing in the resolution now 
before us which would be inconsistent with such a provision. 

Is the drawing of a black line around the resolution of the Senate, of March, 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 309 

1834, to obliterate or deface it ? On the contrary, is it not to render it more 
conspicuous, — to place it in bold relief, — to give it a prominence in the public 
view, beyond any other proceeding of this body, in past, and I trust, in all 
future time. If the argument of Senators were, not that we have no power 
to obliterate ; but that the Senate possessed no power to render one portion 
of the journal more conspicuous tlian another, it would have had much greater 
force. Why, sir, by means of this very proceeding, that portion of our 
journal upon which it operates will be rescued from a slumber which would 
otherwise have been eternal, and, fac-similes of the original resolution, with- 
out a word or a letter defaced, will be circulated over the whole Union. 

But, sir, this resolution also directs that across the face of the condemnatory 
resolution there shall be written by the Secretary, " Expunged by the order 
of the Senate this day of , in the year of our Lord 1837." 

Will this obliterate any part of the original resolution ? If it does, the 
duty of the Secretary will be performed in a very bungling manner. No such 
thmg is intended. It would be easy to remove every scruple from every 
mind upon this subject, by amending the resolution of the Senator from Mis- 
souri, so as to direct the Secretary to perform his duty in such a manner as 
not to obliterate any part of the condemnatory resolution. Such a direction, 
however, appears to me to be wholly unnecessary. The nature of the whole 
proceeding is very plain. We now adopt a resolution, expressing our strong 
reprobation of the original resolution ; and for this purpose we use the word 
" expunged," as the strongest term which we can apply. We then direct our 
Secretary to draw black lines around it, and place such a reference to our 
proceedings of this day upon its face, that m all time to come, whoever may 
inspect this portion of our journal, will be pointed at once to the record of its 
condemnation. What lawyer has- not observed upon the margin of the 
judgment docket, if the original judgment has been removed to a superior 
court, and there reversed, a minute of such reversal ? In our editions of the 
statutes, have we not all noted the repeal of any of them, which may have 
taken place at a subsequent period ? Who ever heard, in the one case or the 
other, that this was obliterating or destroying the record, or the book ? So in 
this case, we make a mere reference to our future proceeding upon the face 
of the resolution, instead of the margin. Suppose we should only repeal 
the obnoxious resolution, and direct such a reference to be made upon its 
face ? Would any Senator contend that this would be an obliteration of the 
journal ? 

But it has been contended that the word expunge is not the appropriate 
word ; and Ave have wrested it from its true signification, in applying it to the 
present case. Even if this allegation were correct, the answer would be at 
hand. You might then convict us of bad taste, but not of a violation of the 
Constitution. On the face of the resolution we have stated distinctly what 
we mean. We have directed the Secretary in what manner he shall under- 
stand it, and we have excluded the idea that it is our intention to obliterate 
or to destroy the journal. 



310 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

But I shall contend that the word expunge is the appropriate word, and 
that there is not another in the English language so precisely adapted to con- 
vey our meaning. I shall show, from the highest literary and parliamentary 
authorities, that the word has acquired a signification entirely distinct from 
that of actual obliteration. Let me proceed immediately to this task. After 
citing my authorities, I shall proceed with the argument. First, then, for 
those of a literary character. I read from Crabbe's Synonymes, page 140 ; 
and every Senator will admit that this is a work of established reputation. In 
speaking of the use of the word expunge, the author says : " When the con- 
tents of a book are in part rejected, they are aptly described as being 
expunged; in this manner the free-thiaking sects expunge everything from 
the Bible which does not suit their purpose, or they expunge from their creed 
what does not humor their passions." The idea that an actual obliteration was 
intended in these cases would be manifestly absurd. In the same page there 
is a quotation from Mr. Burke to illustrate the meaning of this word. " I 
believe," says he, " that any person who was of age to take a part in public 
concerns forty years ago (if the intermediate space were expunged from his 
memory), could hardly credit his senses when he should hear that an army of 
two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island." I shall now cite Mr. 
Jefferson as a literary authority. He has often been referred to on this floor 
as a standard in politics. For this high authority, I am indebted to my friend 
from Louisiana (Mr. Nicholas). In the original draft of the declaration of 
independence, he uses the word expunge in the folloAving manner : " Such 
has been the patient sufferance of these colonies ; and such is now the neces- 
sity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government." 
Although the word alter was substituted for expunge, I presume upon the 
ground that this was too strong a term, yet the change does not detract from 
the literary authority of the precedent. — Jefferson's Correspondence, <&c., 1st 
volume, p>age 17. 

I presume that I have shown that the word expunge has acquired a distinct 
metaphorical meaning in our literature, which excludes the idea of actual 
obliteration. If I should proceed one step further, and prove that in legis- 
lative proceedings it has acquired the very same signification, I shall then have 
fully established my position. For this purpose I cite, first, " the Secret 
Proceedings and Debates of the Federal Convention." In page 118, we find 
the following entries : " On motion to expunge the clause of the qualification 
as to age, it was carried — ten States against one." Again : " On the clause 
respecting the ineligibility to any other ofiice, it was moved that tlie words 
' by any particular State,' he expunged — four States for, five against, and two 
divided." So page 119: "The last blank was filled up with one year, and 
carried — eight ayes, two noes, one divided." 

" Mr. Pinckney moved to expunge the clause — agreed to, nem. con. Again : 
" Mr. Butler moved to expunge the clause of the stipends — lost, seven against, 
three for, one divided." Again, in page 157 : " Mr. Pinckney moved that 
that part of the clause which disqualifies a person from holding an ofSce in 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION, gu 

the State be expunged, because the first and best characters in a State may 
thereby be deprived of a seat in the national council." 

" Question put to strike out the words moved lor and carried — eight ayes, 
three noes." 

It will thus be perceived that in the proceedings of the very convention 
which formed the Constitution under which we are now governed, the word 
expunge was often used in its figurative sense. It will certainly not be 
asserted, or even intimated, by any Senator here, that when these motions to 
expunge prevailed, the words of the original drafl of the Constitution were 
actually obliterated or defaced. The meaning is palpable. These provisions 
were merely rejected ; not actually blotted out. 

But I shall now produce a precedent precisely in point. It presents itself in 
the proceedings of the Senate of Massachusetts, and refers to the famous reso- 
lution of that body adopted on the 15th day of June, 1813, in relation to the 
capture of the British vessel Peacock ; denouncing the late war, and declaring 
that it was not becoming in a moral and religious people, to express any 
approbation of military or naval exploits which were not immediately con- 
nected with the defence of our seacoast. Massachusetts adopted the followin"- 
resolution : 

Resolved, That the aforesaid resolve of the fifteenth day of June, A. D. 
1813, and the preamble thereof, he, and the same are hereby, expunged from 
the journals of the Senate^ 

It is self-evident that, in this case, not the least intention existed of defacing 
the old manuscript journal. The word " expunge " was used in its figurative 
signification, just as it is m the case before us, to express the strongest repro- 
bation of the former proceeding. That proceeding was to be expunged solely 
by force of the subsequent resolution, and not by any actual obhteration. 
There never was any actual obliteration of the journal. 

Judging, then, from the highest English authorities, from the works of 
celebrated authors and statesmen, and from the proceedings of legislative 
bodies, is it not evident that the word expunge has acquired a distinct mean- 
ing, altogether inconsistent with any actual obliteration ? 

All that we have heard about defacing and destroying the journal are mere 
phantoms, which have been conjured up to terrify the timid. We intend no 
such thing. We only mean, most strongly, to express our conviction that the 
condemnatory resolution ought nevep to have found a place on the journal. 
If more authorities were wanting, I might refer to the Legislature of Virginia. 
The present expunging resolution is in exact conformity with their instruc- 
tions to their Senators. As a matter of taste, I cannot say that I much ad- 
mire their plan, though I entertain no doubt but that it is perfectly constitu- 
tional. That State is highly literary ; and I think I have established that 
their Legislature, when they used the word expunge, without intending 
thereby to effect an actual obliteration of the journal, justly appreciated 
the meaning of the language which they employed. 
. The word expunge is, in my opinion, the only one wliich we could have 



312 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

used, clearly and forcibly to accomplish our purpose. Even if it had not been 
sanctioned by practice as a parliamentary word, we ought ourselves to have 
first established the precedent. It suits the case precisely. If you rescind, 
reverse, or repeal a resolution ; you thereby admit that it once had some con- 
stitutional or legal authority. If you declare it to have been null and void 
from the beginning ; this is but the expression of your own opinion that such 
was the fact. This word expunge acts upon the resolution itself It at once 
goes to its origin, and destroys its legal existence as if it had never been. It 
does not merely kill, but it annihilates. 

Parliamentary practice has changed the meaning of several other words 
from their primitive signification, in a similar manner with that of the word 
expunge. The original signification of the word rescind is " to cut off." 
Usage has made it mean, in reference to a law or resolution, to abrogate or 
repeal it. We every day hear motions "to strike out." What is the literal 
meaning of this expression ? The question may be best answered by asking 
another. If I were to request you to strike out a line from your letter, and 
you were willing to comply with my request, what would be your conduct ? 
You would run your pen through it immediately. You would literally strike 
it out. Yet what use do we make of this phrase every day in our legislative 
proceedings? If I make a motion to strike out a section from a bill and it 
prevails, the Secretary encloses the printed copy of it in black lines, and 
makes a note on the margin that it has been stricken out. The original he 
never touches. Why then should not the word expunge, without obliterating 
the proceeding to which it is directed, signify to destroy as if it never had 
existed ? 

After all that has been said, I think I need scarcely again recur to the 
Pennsylvania precedent. It is evident from the whole of that proceeding 
that an actual expunging of the journal was intended, if it had not already 
been executed. I have no recollection whatever of the circumstances, but I 
am under a perfect conviction, from the face of the journal, that such was the 
nature of the case. I should vote now as I did then, after a period of more 
than twenty years. Both my vote, and the motion which I subsequently 
made upon that occasion, evidently proceeded upon this principle. The ques- 
tion arose in this manner, as it appears from the journal. On the 10th of 
February, 1816, ''The Speaker informed the House that a constitutional 
question being involved in a decision by him yesterday, on a motion to ex- 
punge certain proceedings from the journal, he was desirous of having the 
opinion of the House on that decision," viz: '' that a majority can exjDunge 
from the journal proceedings in which the yeas and nays have not been 
called." Now, as no trace whatever appears upon the journal of the pre- 
ceding day of the motion to which the Speaker refers, it is highly probable, 
nay, it is almost certain, that the proceedings had been actually expunged 
before he asked the advice of the House. 

No man feels with more sensibility, the necessity which compels him to 
perform an unkind act towards his brother Senators than myself; but we have 



THE "EXPUNGING" RESOLUTION. 313 

now arrived at that point when imperious duty demands that we sliould 
either adopt this expunging resolution or abandon it forever. Already much 
precious time has been employed in its discussion. The moment has arrived 
when we must act. Senators in the opposition console themselves with the 
belief that posterity will do them justice, should it be denied to them by the 
present generation. They place their own names in the one scale and ours 
in the other, and flatter themselves with the hope that before that tribunal at 
least, theii* weight will preponderate. For my own part, I am willing to abide 
the issue. I am willing to be judged for the vote which I shall give to-day, 
not only by the present, but by future generations, should my obscure name 
ever be mentioned in after times. After the passions and prejudices of the 
present moment shall have subsided, and the impartial historian shall come 
to record the proceedings of this day, he will say that the distinguished men 
who passed the resolution condemning the President were urged on to the 
act by a desire to occupy the high places in the Government. That an ambi- 
tion noble in itself, but not wisely regulated, had obscured their judgment, 
and impelled them to the adoption of a measure unjust, illegal, and unconsti- 
tutional. That in order to vindicate both the Constitution and the President, 
we were justified in passing this expunging resolution, and thus stamping the 
former proceeding with our strongest disapprobation. 

I rejoice in the belief that this promises to be one of the last highly exciting 
questions of the present day. During the period of General Jackson's civil 
administration, what has he not done for the American people ? During this 
period he has had more difficult and dangerous questions to settle, both at 
home and abroad, — questions which aroused more intensely the passions of 
men, — than any of his predecessors. They are now all happily ended, except 
tlie one which we shall this day bring to a close, 

" And all the clonds that lowered upon our house 
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried." 

The country now enjoys abundant prosperity at home, whilst it is re- 
spected and admired by foreign nations. Although the waves may yet be 
in some agitation from the effect of the storms through which we have passed, 
yet I think I can perceive the rainbow of peace extending itself across the 
firmament of Heaven. 

Should the next administration pursue the same course of policy with the 
present — should it dispense equal justice to all portions and all interests of 
the Union, without sacrificing any — should it be conducted with prudence 
and with firmness, and I doubt not but that this will be the case — we shall 
hereafter enjoy comparative peace and quiet in our day. This will be the 
precious fruit of the energy, the toils, and the wisdom of the pilot who has 
conducted us in safety through the storms of his tempestuous administration. 

I am now prepared for the question. I shall vote for this resolution ; but 
not cheerfully. I regret the necessity which exists for passing it ; but I be- 
lieve that imperious duty demands its adoption. If I know my own heart. 



314 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I can truly say that I am not actuated by any desire to obtain a miserable, 
petty, personal triumph, either for myself, or for the President of the United 
States, over my associates upon this floor. 

I am now ready to record my vote, and thus, in the opprobrious language 
of Senators in the opposition, to become one of the executioners of the con- 
demnatory resolution. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1836. 



FIRST INTKODUCTION OF THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY m THE SENATE, 
DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF JACKSON— PETITIONS FOR ITS 
ABOLITION IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — THE RIGHT OF PETITION 
VINDICATED BY BUCHANAN — INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS — ADMISSION 

OF MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION — STATUARY FOR THE CAPITOL AFFAIRS 

OF TEXAS. 



I 



N the latter pr.rt of the second administration of General 
Jackson, the subject of slavery began to be pressed upon 
the attention of Congress by petitions for its abolition in the 
District of Columbia. 

In a future chapter will be traced the origin and progress of 
the anti-slavery agitation in the Northern States. At present, 
it is only needful for me to describe Mr. Buchanan's course as 
a Senator, on the different aspects of this subject which arose 
during the second administration of General Jackson. On the 
7th of January, 1836, two petitions were presented in the 
Senate, signed by citizens of Ohio, praying for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Calhoun demanded 
that tiiey should be read, and, after the reading, he objected to 
their being received. Mr. Buchanan made the following re- 
marks in replying to Mr. Calhoun : 

Mr. Buchanan said that, for two or three weeks past, there had been in 
his possession a memorial from the Cain Quarterly Meeting of the religious 
Society of Friends, in the State of Pennsylvania, requesting Congress to 
abolish slaveiy and the slave trade within the District of Columbia. This 
memorial was not a printed form — its language was not that in established 
use for such documents. It did not proceed from those desperate fanatics who 
have been endeavoring to disturb the security and peace of society in the 
Southern States, by the distribution of incendiary pamphlets and papers. Far 
different is the truth. It emanates from a society of Christians, whose object 
had always been to promote peace and good-will among men, and who have 
been the efficient and persevering friends of humanity in every clime. To 



316 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

their untiring efforts, more than to those of aiiy otlier denomination of 
Christians, we owe the progress which has been made in abohshing the 
African slave trade throughout the world. This memorial was their testimony 
against the existence of slavery. This testimony they had borne for more 
than a century. Of the purity of their motives, there could not be a question. 

He had omitted to present tliis memorial at an earlier day, because he had 
thought that, on its presentation at the proper time, much good might be done. 
He had believed that, by j^rivate consultations, some resolution might be de- 
vised upon this exciting subject which would obtain the unanimous vote of 
the Senate. If there was one man in that body not willing to adopt a proper 
measure to calm the troubled spirit of the South, he did not know him. 
This, in his judgment, Avould be the best mode of accomplishing the object 
which we all desire to accomplish. The proper course to attain this result 
was, in his opinion, to refer the subject, either to a select committee, or to the 
Committee for the District of Columbia. They would examine it in all its 
bearings, they would ascertain the views and feelings of individual Senators, 
and he had no doubt they would be able to recommend some measure to the 
Senate on which they could all unite. This would have a most happy eflect 
upon the country. He had intended, upon presenting the memorial which he 
had in charge, to have suggested this mode of proceeding. He regretted, 
therefore, he had not known that his friend from Ohio (Mr. Morris) was in 
possession of memorials having a similar object in view. If he had been 
informed of it, he should have endeavored to persuade him to wait until 
Monday next,' when he (Mr. B.) Avould have been prepared to pursue the 
course he had indicated. But the question has now been forced upon us. No 
(said Mr. B.), it has not been forced upon me, because I am glad to have a 
suitable occasion of expressing my opinions upon the subject. 

The memorial which I have in my possession is entitled to the utmost 
respect, from the character of the memorialists. As I entirely dissent from 
the opinion which they express, that we ought to abolish slavery in the 
District of Columbia, I feel it to be due to them, to myself, and to the Senate, 
respectfully, but firmly, to state the reasons why I cannot advocate their 
views or acquiesce in their conclusions. 

If any one principle of constitutional law can, at this day, be considered as 
settled, it is, that Congress have no right, no power, over the question of 
slavery within those States where it exists. The property of the master in 
his slave existed in full force before the Federal Constitution was adopted. It 
was a subject which then belonged, as it still belongs, to the exclusive juris- 
diction of the several States. These States, by the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, never yielded to the General Government any right to interfere with the 
question. It remains where it Avas previous to the establishment of our 
confederacy. 

The Constitution has, in the clearest terms, recognized the right of property 
in slaves. It prohibits any State into Avhich a slave may have fled from pass- 
ing any law to discharge him from slavery, and declares that he shall be 



SPEECH ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 317 

delivered up by tlie authorities of such State to his master. Nay, more, it 
makes the existence of slavery the foundation of political power, by giving to 
those States within which it exists representatives in Congress, not only in 
proportion to the whole number of free persons, but also in proportion to 
tlircc-fif'ths of the number of slaves. 

An occasion very fortunately arose in the first Congress to settle this ques- 
tion forever. The Society for the abolition of Slavery in Pennsylvania brought 
it before that Congress by a memorial which was presented on the 11th day 
of February, 1790. After the subject had been discussed for several days, 
and after solemn deliberation, the House of Representatives, in Committee of 
the Whole, on the 23d day of March, 1790, resolved " That Congress have 
no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment 
of them within any of the States ; it remaining with the several States alone 
to provide any regulations therein, which humanity and true policy may 
require." 

I have thought it would be proper to present this decision, which was 
made almost half a century ago, distinctly to the view of the American 
people. The language of the resolution is clear, precise, and definite. It 
leaves the question where the Constitution left it, and where, so far as I am 
concerned, it ever shall remain. The Constitution of the United States 
never would have been called into existence, — instead of the innumerable 
blessings which have flowed from our happy Union, we should have had 
anarchy, jealousy, and civil war among the sister Republics of which our 
confederacy is composed, had not the free States abandoned all control over 
this question. For one, whatever may be my opinions upon the abstract 
question of slavery, (and I am free to confess they are those of the people of 
Pennsylvania,) I shall never attempt to violate this fundamental compact. 
The Union will be dissolved, and incalculable evils will arise from its ashes, 
the moment any such attempt is seriously made by the free States in 
Congress. 

What, then, are the circumstances under which these memorials are now 
presented ? A number of fanatics, led on by foreign incendiaries, have been 
scattering " arrows, firebrands, and death " throughout the Southern States. 
The natural tendency of their publications is to produce dissatisfaction and 
revolt among the slaves, and to incite their wild passions to vengeance. All 
history, as well as the present condition of the slaves, proves that there can 
be no danger of the final result of a servile war. But, in the mean time, 
what dreadful scenes may be enacted before such an insurrection, which 
would spare neither age nor sex, could be suppressed I What agony of mind 
must be suffered, especially by the gentler sex, in consequence of these pub- 
lications I Many a mother clasps her infant to her bosom when she retires to 
rest, under dreadful apprehensions that she may be aroused from lier slumbers 
by the savage yells of the slaves by whom she is surrounded. These are the 
works of the abohtionists. That their motives may be honest I do not 
doubt, but their zeal is without knowledge. The history of the human race 



318 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

presents numerous examples of ignorant enthusiasts, the purity of whose in- 
tentions cannot be doubted, who have spread devastation and bloodshed over 
the face of the earth. 

These fanatics, instead of benefiting the slaves who are the objects of their 
regard, have inflicted serious injury upon them. Self-preservation is the first 
law of nature. The masters, for the sake of their wives and children, for the 
sake of all that is near and dear to them on eartb, must tighten the reins of 
authority over their slaves. They must thus counteract the efforts of the 
abolitionists. The slaves are denied many indulgences which their masters 
would otherwise cheerfully grant. They must be kept in such a state of 
bondage as effectually to prevent their rising. These are the injurious effects 
produced by the abolitionists upon the slave himself. Whilst, on the one 
hand, they render his condition miserable, by presenting to his mind vague 
notions of freedom never to be realized, on the other, they make it doubly 
miserablcj by compelling the master to be severe, in order to prevent any 
attempts at insurrection. They thus render it impossible for the master to 
treat his slave according to the dictates of his heart and his feelings. 

Besides, do not the abolitionists perceive that the spirit which is thus 
roused must protract to an indefinite period the emancipation of the slave ? 
The necessary effect of their efforts is to render desperate those to whom the 
power of emancipation really belongs. I believe most conscientiously, in 
whatever light this subject can be viewed, that the best interests of the slave 
require that the question should be left, where the Constitution has left it, to 
the slaveholding States themselves, without foreign interference. 

This being a true statement of the case, as applied to the States where 
slavery exists, what is now asked by these memoriaUsts ? That in this Dis- 
trict of ten miles square— a District carved out of two slaveholding States, 
and surrounded by them on all sides — slavery shall be aboUshed. What 
would be the effects of granting their request? You would thus erect a cita- 
del in the very heart of these States, upon a territory which they have ceded 
to you for a far different purpose, from which abolitionists and incendiaries 
could securely attack the peace and safety of their citizens. You establish a 
spot within the slaveholding States which would be a city of refuge for run- 
away slaves. You create by law a central point from which trains of gun- 
powder may be securely laid, extending into the surrounding States, which 
may, at any moment, produce a fearful and destructive explosion. By passing 
such a law, you introduce the enemy into the very bosom of these two 
States, and afibrd him every opportunity to produce a servile insurrection. 
Is there any reasonable man who can for one moment suppose that Virginia 
and Maryland Avould have ceded the District of Columbia to the United 
States, if they had entertained the slightest idea that Congress would ever 
use it for any such purpose? They ceded it for your use, for your conven- 
ience, and not for their own destruction. When slavery ceases to exist, under 
the laws of Virginia and Maryland, then, and not till then, ought it to be 
abolished in the District of Columbia. 



THE RECEPTION OF PETITIONS. 319 

(Mr. B. said that, notwithstanding these were his opinions, he could not 
vote for the motion of the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) not to 
receive these memorials. He would not at present proceed to state his rea- 
sons, still hoping the Senate could yet agree upon some course which would 
prove satisfactory to all. With this view, he moved that the whole subject 
be postponed until Monday next.) 

When the following Monday came (January 11th, 1836), Mr. 
Buchanan said : 

He was now about to present the memorial of the Cain Quarterly Meet- 
ing of the Religious Society of Friends in Pennsylvania, requesting Congress 
to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. On this 
subject he had expressed his opinions to the Senate on Thursday last, and he 
had no disposition to repeat them at present. He would say, however, that 
on a review of these opinions, he was perfectly satisfied with them. All he 
should now say was, that the memorial which he was about to present was 
perfectly respectful in its language. Indeed, it could not possibly be other- 
wise, considering the respectable source from which it emanated. 

It would become his duty to make some motion in regard to this memorial. 
On Thursday last, he had suggested that in his judgment the best course to 
pursue was to refer these memorials to a selected committee, or to the com- 
mittee for the District of Columbia. He still thought so ; but he now found 
that insurmountable obstacles presented themselves to such a reference. 

In presenting this memorial and in exerting himself so far as in him lay, 
to secure for it that respectful reception by the Senate which it deserved, he 
should do his duty to the memorialists. After it should receive this recep- 
tion, he should have a duty to perform to himself and to his country. He 
was clearly of opinion, for the reasons he had stated on Thursday last, that 
Congress ought not at this time to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
and that it was our duty promptly to place this exciting question at rest. 
He should, therefore, move that the memorial be read, and that the prayer 
of the memorialists be rejected. 

At a subsequent day (January 19th), the pending question 
was, on the reception of the Memorial of the Pennsylvania 
Quakers, or Friends ; and on this question Mr. Buchanan said : 

It was not now his intention to repeat anything he had said on a former 
occasion in regard to the abolition of slavery in this District. The remarks 
which he had then made, after much reflection, still met his entire approba- 
tion. He would not now have alluded to them were it not for the misappre- 
hension which still appeared to prevail upon this floor in regard to the state 
of Northern feeling on this subject. 

Those remarks had, he believed, been more extensively circulated through- 
out Pennsylvania than any which he had ever made upon any occasion. If 



330 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

they had been censured anywhere in that State, by any party, the fact was 
unknown to him. On the contrary, he had strong reasons to beheve they had 
been received with general approbation. 

He was not in the habit of using private letters to sustain any position 
which he might take upon this floor or elsewhere. He Avould say, however, 
that since he had presented the memorial now the subject of consideration 
before the Senate, he had received another memorial of a similar character 
from the city of Philadelphia. This memorial had been transmitted to him 
by two gentlemen whose name and character would be the strongest guaranty 
for the truth of their assertions, did he feel himself at liberty to make them 
known to the Senate. He would not even have alluded to their letter, but that 
it related to a public subject in which the country was deeply interested, and 
accompanied the memorial which they had requested him to present to the 
Senate. The following is an extract from this letter : 

" Although we have not the pleasure of thy acquaintance, permit us on 
this occasion to express our satisfaction with thy remarks in the Senate some 
weeks since, in which the opinion was forcibly sustained that no sensible man 
at the North would advocate the right of Congress to interfere with the sub- 
ject of slavery in the slave States themselves. We are fully persuaded this 
is the fact in our neighborhood. 

" In a pretty extensive acquaintance with the friends of abolition in this 
city, we unhesitatingly declare that we have never heard such an opinion 
advocated, and loe defy our oppo7ients to j^oint out a man that has ever cir- 
culated any puhlication calculated to produce discord in the Southern States. 

" But whilst we fully recognize this view, we are aware that the Constitu- 
tion guaranties to us the right of memorializing Congress on any subject con- 
nected with the welfare of the District of Columbia, and we intend ever to 
exercise it in the spirit of charity and good-feehng." 

Mr. B. believed this statement to be true. Although all the people of 
Pennsylvania were opposed to slavery in the abstract, yet they would not 
sanction any attempts to excite the slaves of the Southern States to insurrec- 
tion and bloodshed. Whilst they knew their own rights, and would main- 
tain them, they never would invade the rights of others which had been se- 
cured by the Federal Constitution. He was proud to say this had always 
been the character and the conduct of the State which he had in part the 
honor to represent in her relations with her sister States. 

He felt himself justified in declaring that Pennsylvania was perfectly 
sound upon this question. Abohtionists there may be in Pennsylvania, but 
it had never been his fate to meet a single one. If we have a man amongst 
us who desires, by the circulation of incendiary publications and pictures 
throughout the slaveholding States, to produce a servile insurrection, and 
thus to abolish slavery, he knew him not. In the language of the letter he 
had just read, whatever might be the case further north, he might defy any 
gentleman to point out a man in Pennsylvania who has ever circulated any 
publication calculated to produce discord in the Southern States. 



SLAVERY AND RIGHT OF PETITION. 321 

He had heard within the last few days that emissaries were now travel- 
ing throughout Pennsylvania for the purpose of propagating the doctrine of 
immediate abolition. He thought he might venture to predict that they 
would fail in their attempts. 

Although he did not mean at present to discuss the general question, yet 
the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Preston) must permit him to say that, 
in his remarks of yesterday, he had done much to dignify the cause of 
abolition, and to give its supporters a character which they did not deserve. 

Mr. B. was not so well able to judge what effect those remarks might pro- 
duce on the South ; but he protested against the accuracy of the statements 
which that gentleman had made in regard to the condition of Northern feel- 
ing on this subject. His information had been incorrect. If the gloomy 
coloring of the picture which he had presented could be considered any thing 
but a fancy sketch, the South might believe that the time had arrived Avhen it 
would be their duty to decide whether it was not necessary to dissolve this 
Union, for the protection of their rights. Mr. B. thought far otherwise. 
This crisis had not arrived, and, he trusted, never would arrive. The force 
of public opinion will prostrate this fanatical and dangerous spirit. He must 
say, however, that the enemies of the cause of abolition at the North had a 
right to expect that gentlemen from the South would not adopt a course 
which might tend to increase our diCBculties. They ought to permit us to 
judge for ourselves in this matter, and to throw no obstacles in our way 
which the nature of the subject does not necessarily present. 

Let it be once understood that the sacred right of petition and the cause 
of the abolitionists must rise or must fall together, and the consequences may 
be fatal. I would, therefore, warn Southern gentlemen to reflect seriously in 
what situation they place their friends in the North, by insisting that this 
petition shall not be received. 

We have just as little right to interfere with slavery in the South, as we 
have to touch the right of petition. Whence is this right derived? Can a 
republican government exist without it ? Man might as well attempt to 
exist without breathing the vital air. No government possessing any of the 
elements of liberty has ever existed, or can ever exist, unless its citizens or 
subjects enjoy this right. From the very structure of your Government, 
from the very establishment of a Senate and House of Representatives, the 
right of petition naturally and necessarily resulted. A representative repub- 
lic, established by the people, without the people having the right to make 
their wants and their wishes known to their servants, would be the most 
palpaple absurdity. This right, even if it were not expressly sanctioned by 
the Constitution, would result from its very nature. It could not be con- 
trolled by any action of Congress, or either branch of it. If the Constitu- 
tion had been silent upon the subject, the only consequence would be, that it 
would stand in the very front rank of those rights of the people which are 
expressly guarantied to them by the ninth article of the amendments to that 
instrument, inserted from abundant but necessary caution. I shall read this 

I.— 21 



322 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

article. It declares that " the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights 
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." 
It would, without any express provision, have stood in the same rank with 
the liberty of speech and of the press, and have been entirely beyond the 
control of the Government. It is a right which could not have been in- 
fi'inged without extinguishing the vital spiiit of our institutions. If any had 
been so bold as to attempt to violate it, it would have been a conclusive ar- 
gument to say to them that the Constitution has given you no power over the 
right of petition, and you dare not touch it. 

The Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) has justly denominated 
the amendments to the Constitution as our Bill of Rights. Tlie jealousy 
which the States entertained of federal power brought these amendments 
into existence. They supposed that, in future times, Congress might desire 
to extend the powers of this Government, and usurp the rights which were 
not granted them by the people of the States. From a provident caution, 
they have, in express terms, denied to Congress every sort of control over 
religion ; over the freedom of speech and of the press ; and over the right of 
petition. The first article of the amendments declares that " Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the 
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government 
for a redress of grievances." 

Now, sir, what is the first position taken by the Senator from South Caro- 
lina against receiving this memorial? I desire to quote him with perfect 
accuracy. He says that the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing 
any law to abridge the right of petition ; that, to refuse to receive this peti- 
tion, would not be to pass any such law, and that therefore, the Constitution 
would not be violated by such a refusal. 

Does not the Senator perceive that, if this doctrine can be maintained, the 
right of petition is gone forever ? It is a mere empty name. The Senate 
would possess the power of controlling it at their will and pleasure. No mat- 
ter what may be the prayer of any petition ; no matter how just may be 
the grievances of the people demanding redress, we may refuse to hear their 
complaints, and inform them that this is one of our prerogatives : because, to 
refuse to receive their petition is not the passage of a law abridging their 
right to petition. How can the gentleman escape from this consequence ? 
Is the Senate to be the arbiter ? Are we to decide what the people may pe- 
tition for, and what they shall not bring before us ? Is the servant to dictate 
to the master ? Such a construction can never be the true one. 

The most striking feature of this argument is, that the very article of the 
Constitution which was intended to guard the right of petition with the 
most jealous care is thus perverted from its original intention, and made the 
instrument of destroying this very right. What we cannot do by law, what 
is beyond the power of both Houses of Congress and the President, accord- 
ing to the gentleman's argument, the Senate can of itself accomplish. The 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 323 

Senate alone, if his argument be correct, may abridge tbe right of petition, 
acting in its separate capacity, though it could not, as one branch of the 
Legislature, consent to any law which would confer upon itself this power. 

What is the true history and character of this article of the Constitution? 
In the thirteenth year of the reign of that " royal scoundrel " Charles the 
Second, as the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Leigh) has justly denominated 
him, an act of Parliament was passed, abridging the right of petition. It 
declared that "no petition to the king or either House of Parliament, for any 
alteration in Church or State, shall be signed by above twenty persons, unless 
the matter thereof be approved by three justices of the peace, or the major 
part of the grand jury in the county ; and in London by the lord mayor, 
aldermen, and common council ; nor shall any petition be presented by more 
than ten persons at a time." Each Senator will readily perceive that the 
right of petition was thus laid almost entirely prostrate at the feet of the 
sovereign. The justices of the peace, and the sheriflfs who selected the grand 
juries, were his creatures, appointed and removed at his pleasure. Out of 
the city of London, without their consent, no petition for an alteration in 
Church or State could be signed by more than twenty individuals. At the 
revolution of 1G88, the Bill of Rights guarantied to English subjects the 
right of petitioning the king, but the courts of justice decided that it did not 
repeal the statute of the second Charles. This statute still remained in force 
at the adoption of the federal Constitution. Such was the state of the law 
in that country, from which we have derived most of our institutions, when 
this amendment to the Constitution was adopted. 

Although the Constitution, as it came from the hands of its framers, gave 
to Congress no power to touch the right of petition, yet some of the States to 
whom it was submitted for ratification, apprehending the time might arrive 
when Congress would be disposed to act like the British Parliament, expressly 
withdrew the subject from our control. Not satisfied with the fact that no 
power over it had been granted by the Constitution, they determined to pro- 
hibit us in express terms from ever exercising such a power. This is the true 
history of the first article of our Bill of Rights. 

Let me put another case to the Senator from South Carolina. Some years 
since, as a manager on the part of the House of Representatives, I had the 
honor to appear before this body, then sitting as a high court of impeachment. 
In that case, the accused, when sitting as a district judge of the United 
States, had brought an attorney of his court before him by an attachment for 
contempt, and without any trial by jury had convicted him of a libel, and 
sentenced him to imprisonment. The judge was acquitted ; and at the mo- 
ment I thought this decision had placed the freedom of the press in danger. 
If the sedition law were clearly unconstitutional, and nobody now doubts it; 
if Congress could not confer upon the courts of the United States, by express 
enactment, any question over the power of libel, I thought it monstrous that 
a judge, without the intervention of a jury, under highly excited feelings, 
should be permitted to try and to punish libels committed against himself 



324 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

according to his will and pleasure. My apprehensions were of but short 
duration. A few days after the acquittal of this judge, the Senate, without 
one dissenting voice, passed a bill, not to create a new law, but declaratory 
of what the old law, or rather what the Constitution was, under which no 
federal judge will ever again dare to punish a libel as a contempt. The con- 
stitutional provision in favor of the liberty of the press was thus redeemed 
from judicial construction. 

Now, sir, we must all admit that libels of the grossest character are daily 
published against the Senate and its individual members. Suppose an at- 
tempt should be made to bring one of these libelers before us, and to punish 
him for a contempt, would the gentleman from Soath Carolina contend that 
we might do so without violating the Constitution, and that we might con- 
vict him and sentence him to imprisonment, because such a conviction and 
sentence would not be the passage of a law abridging the freedom of the 
press ? The gentleman's excited feelings upon the subject of abohtion have 
led his judgment astray. No construction can be correct which would lead 
to such palpable absurdities. 

Tlie very language of this amendment itself contains the strongest recogni- 
tion of the right of petition. In the clearest terms, it presupposes its exis- 
tence. How can you abridge a right which has no previous existence ? On 
this question I deem the argument of my friend from Georgia (Mr. King) 
conclusive. The amendment assumes that the people have the right to peti- 
tion for the redress of grievances, and places it bej^ond the power of Congress 
to touch this sacred right. The truth is, that the authors of the amendment 
believed this to be a Government of such tremendous power that it was 
necessary, in express terms, to withdraw from its grasp their most essential 
rights. The right of every citizen to worship his God according to the dic- 
tates of his own conscience ; his right freely to speak, and freely to print and 
publish his thoughts to the world ; and his right to petition the Government 
for a redress of grievances, are jilaced entirely beyond the control of the Con- 
gress of the United States, or either of its branches. There may they ever 
remain ! These fundamental principles of liberty are companions. They rest 
upon the same foundation. They must stand or must fall together. They 
will be maintained so long as American liberty shall endure. 

The next argument advanced by the gentleman is, that we are not bound 
to receive this petition, because to grant its prayer would be unconstitutional? 
In this argument I shall not touch the question, whether Congress possess the 
power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia or not. Suppose they 
do not, can the gentleman maintain the position, that we are authorized by 
the Constitution to refuse to receive a petition from the people, because we 
may deem the object of it unconstitutional? Whence is any such restriction 
of the right of petition derived? Who gave it to us? Is it to be found in 
the Constitution ? The people are not constitutional lawyers ; but they feel 
oppression, and know when they are aggrieved. They present their com- 
plaints to us in the form of a petition. I ask, by what authority can we 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 325 

refuse to receive it ? They have a right to spread their wishes and their wants 
before us, and to ask for redress. We are bound respectfully to consider their 
request ; and the best answer which we can give them is, that they have not 
conferred upon us the power, under the Constitution of the United States, to 
grant them the relief which they desire. On any other principle we may 
first decide that we have no power over a particular subject, and then refuse 
to hear the petitions of the people in relation to it. We would thus place the 
constitutional right of our constituents to petition at the mercy of our own 
discretion. 

Again, sir, we possess the power of originating amendments to the Consti- 
tution. Although, therefore, we may not be able to grant the petitioners 
relief, such a petition may induce us to exercise this power, and to ask for a 
new grant of authority from the States. 

The gentleman's third proposition was, that we are not bound to receive 
this petition, because it is no grievance to the citizens of any of the States, 
that slavery exists in this District. But who are to be the judges, in the first 
instance, whether the people are aggrieved or not ? Is it those who suffer, 
or fancy they suffer, or the Senate ? If we are to decide when they ought 
to feel aggrieved, and when they ought to be satisfied, if the tribunal to whom 
their petitions are addressed may refuse to receive them, because, in their 
opinion, there was no just cause of complaint, the right of petition is destroyed. 
It would be but a poor answer to their petitions to tell them they ought not 
to have felt aggrieved, that they are mistaken, and that, therefore, their com- 
plaints would not be received by their servants. 

I may be asked, is there no case in which I would be willing to refuse to 
receive a petition ? I answer that it must be a very strong one indeed to 
justify such a refusal. There is one exception, however, which results from 
the very nature of the right itself. Neither the body addressed nor any of 
its members must be insulted, under the pretext of exercising this riglit. It 
must not be perverted from its purpose, and be made the instrument of de- 
grading the body to which the petition is addressed. Such a petition would 
be in fraud of the right itself, and the necessary power of self-protection and 
self-preservation inherent in every legislative body confers ujion it the 
authority of defending itself against direct insults presented in this or any 
other form. Beyond this exception I would not go ; and it is solely for the 
purpose of self-protection, in my opinion, that the rules of the Senate enable 
any of its members to raise the question, whether a petition shall be received 
or not. If the rule has any other object in view, it is a violation of the 
Constitution. 

I would confine this exception within the narrowest limits. The acts of 
the body addressed may be freely canvassed by the people, and they may be 
shown to be unjust or unconstitutional. These may be the very reasons why 
the petition is presented. " To speak his mind is every freeman's right." 
They may and they ought to express themselves with that manly indepen- 
dence which belongs to American citizens. To exclude their petition, it must 



326 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

appear palpable that an insult to the body was intended, and not a redress of 
grievances. 

Extreme cases have been put by the Senator from South Carolina. Ridicu- 
lous or extravagant petitions may be presented ; though I should think that 
scarcely a sane man could be found in this country who would ask Congress 
to abolish slavery in the State of Georgia. In such a case I would receive 
the petition, and consign it at once to that merited contempt which it would 
deserve. The Constitution secures the right of being heard by petition to 
every citizen ; and I would not abridge it because he happened to be a fool. 

The proposition is almost too plain for argument, that if the people 
have a constitutional right to petition, a corresponding duty is imposed upon 
us to receive their petitions. From the very nature of things, rights and 
duties are reciprocal. The human mind cannot conceive of the one without the 
other. They are relative terms. If the people have a right to command, it 
is the duty of their servants to obey. If I have a right to a sum of money, 
it is the duty of my debtor to pay it to me. If the people have a right to 
petition their representatives, it is our duty to receive their petition. 

This question was solemnly determined by the Senate more than thirty 
years ago. Neither before nor since that time, so far as I can learn, has the 
general right of petition ever been called in question, until the motion now 
under consideration was made by the Senator from South Carolina. Of 
course I do not speak of cases embraced within the exception which I have 
just stated. No Senator has ever contended that this is one of them. To 
prove ray position, I shall read an extract from our journals. On Monday, 
the 21st January, 1805, " Mr. Logan presented a petition signed Thomas 
Morris, Clerk, in behalf of the meeting of the representatives of the people 
called Quakers, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc., stating that the petitioners, 
from a sense of religious duty, had again come forward to plead the cause of 
their oppressed and degraded fellow-men of the African race ; and, on the 
question, " Shall this petition be received?" it passed in the affirmative; yeas, 
19 ; nays, 9. 

" The yeas and nays being required by one-fifth of the Senators present, 
those who voted in the affirmative are — Messrs. Adams, Mass., Bayard, Del., 
Brown, Ky., Condict, N. J., Franklin, N. C, Hillhouse, Conn., Howland, 
R. I., Logan, Penn., Macla)^, Penn., Mitchell, N. Y., Alcott, N. H., Pickering, 
Mass., Plumer, N. H., Smith, Ohio, Smith, Vt., Stone, N. C, Sumpter, S. C, 
White, Del., "Worthington, Ohio. 

"And those who voted in the negative are — Anderson, Tenn., Baldwin, 
Ga., Bradley, Vt., Cocke, Tenn., Jackson, Ga., Moore, Va., Smith, Md., 
Smith, N. Y., and Wright, Md. 

" So the petition was read." 

The Senate will perceive that I have added to the names of the members 
of the Senate that of the States which they each represented. The Senator 
from South CaroUna will see that, among those who, upon this occasion, sus- 
tained the right of petition, there is found the name of General Sumpter, his 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 337 

distinguished predecessor. I wish him also to observe that but seven 
Senators from slaveholding States voted against receiving the petition; 
although it was of a character vs'ell calculated to excite their hostile and 
jealous feelings. 

The present, sir, is a real controversy between liberty and power. In my 
humble judgment, it is far the most important question which has been before 
the Senate since I have had the honor of occupying a seat in this body. It 
is a contest between those, however unintentionally, who desire to abridge 
the right of the people, in asking their servants for a redress of grievances, 
and those who desire to leave it, as the Constitution left it, free as the air. 
Petitions ought ever to find their way into the Senate without impediment; 
and I trust that the decision upon this question will result in the establish- 
ment of one of the dearest rights which a free people can enjoy. 

Now, sir, why should the Senator from South Carolina urge the motion 
which he has made ? I wish I could persuade him to withdraw it. We of 
the North honestly believe, and I feel confident he will not doubt our sin- 
cerity, that we cannot vote for his motion without violating our duty to God 
and to the country — without disregarding tlie oath which we have sworn, to 
support the Constitution. This is not the condition of those who advocate his 
motion. It is not pretended that the Constitution imposes any obligation 
upon them to vote for this motion. With them it is a question of mere 
expediency; with us, one of constitutional duty. I ask gentlemen of the 
South, for their own sake, as well as for that of their friends in the North, to 
vote against this motion. It will place us all in a false position, where neither 
their sentiments nor ours will be properly understood. 

The people of the North are justly jealous of their rights and liberties. 
Among these, they hold the right of petition to be one of the most sacred 
character. I would say to the gentlemen of the South, why then will you 
array yourselves, without any necessity, against this right ? You believe that 
we are much divided on the question of abolition; why, then, will you intro- 
duce another element of discord amongst us, which may do your cause much 
harm, and which cannot possibly do it any good ? When you possess an im- 
pregnable fortress, if you will defend it, why take shelter in an outwork, 
where defeat is certain? Why select the very weakest position, one on 
which you will yourselves present a divided front to the enemy, when it is in 
your power to choose one on which you and we can all unite ? You will thus 
afford an opportunity to the abolitionists at the North to form a false issue 
with your friends. You place us in such a condition that we cannot defend 
you, without infringing the sacred right of petition. Do you not perceive 
that the question of abolition may thus be indissolubly connected, in public 
estimation, with a cause which we can never abandon. If the abolitionists 
themselves had been consulted, I will venture to assert, they ought to have 
advised the very course which has been adopted by their greatest enemies. 

The vote upon this unfortunate motion may do almost equal harm in the 
South. It may produce an impression there, that we who will vote against 



328 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the motion are not friendly to the protection of their constitutional rights. 
It may arouse jealousy and suspicion, where none ought to exist; and may 
thus magnify a danger which has already been greatly exaggerated. In 
defending any great cause, it is always disastrous to take a position which 
cannot be maintained. Your forces thus become scattered and inefficient, 
and the enemy may obtain possession of the citadel whilst you are vainly 
attempting to defend an outpost. I am sorry, indeed, that this motion has 
been made. 

I shall now proceed to defend my own motion from the attacks which have 
been made upon it. It has been equally opposed by both extremes. I have 
not found, upon the present occasion, the maxim to be true, that " in medio 
tutissimus ibis." The Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Porter), and the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), seem both to believe that little, if any, 
difference exists between the refusal to receive a petition, and the rejection 
of its prayer after it has been received. Indeed, the gentleman from Louis- 
iana, whom I am happy to call my friend, says he can see no difference at all 
between these motions. At the moment I heard tliis remark, I was inclined 
to believe that it proceeded from that confusion of ideas which sometimes 
exists in the clearest heads of the country from which he derives his origin, 
and from which I am myself proud to be descended. What, sir, no differ- 
ence between refusing to receive a request at all, and actually receiving it 
and considering it respectfully, and afterwards deciding, without delay, that it 
is not in your power to grant it 1 There is no man in the country, acquainted 
with the meaning of the jtlainest words in the English language, who will 
not recognize the distinction in a moment. 

If a constituent of that gentleman should present to him a written request, 
and he should tell him to go about his business, and take his paper with him, 
that he would not have any thing to do Avith him or it: this would be to 
refuse to receive the petition. 

On the other hand, if the gentleman should receive this written request 
of his constituent, read it over carefully and respectfully, and file it away 
among his papers, but, finding it was of an unreasonable or dangerous charac- 
ter, he should inform him, without taking further time to reflect upon it, that 
the case was a plain one, and that he could not, consistently with what he 
believed to be his duty, grant the request : this would be to reject the prayer 
of the petition. 

There is as much difference between the two cases, as there would be be- 
tween kicking a man down stairs who attempted to enter your house, and re- 
ceiving him politely, examining his request, and then refusing to comply with it. 

It has been suggested that the most proper course would be to refer this 
petition to a committee. What possible good can result from referring it ? 
Is there a Senator on this floor who has not long since determined whether 
he will vote to abolish slavery in this District or not ? Does any gentleman 
require the report of a committee, in order to enable him to decide this ques- 
tion ? Not one. 



I 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 329 

By granting the prayer of this memorial, as I observed on a former occa- 
sion, you would establish a magazine of gunpowder here, from which trains 
might be laid into the surrounding States, which would produce fearful explo- 
sions. In the very heart of the slave-holding States themselves you would 
erect an impregnable citadel from whence the abolitionists might securely 
spread throughout these States, by circutating their incendiary pamphlets and 
pictures, the seeds of disunion, insurrection, and servile war. You would 
thus take advantage of Virginia and Maryland in ceding to you this District, 
without expressly forbidding Congress to abolish slavery here whilst it exists 
within their limits. No man can, for one moment, suppose that they would 
have made this cession upon any other terms, had they imagined that a 
necessity could ever exist for such a restriction. Whatever may be my 
opinion of the power of Congress, under the Constitution, to interfere with this 
question, about which at present I say nothing, I shall as steadily and as 
sternly oppose its exercise as if I believed no such power to exist. 

In making the motion now before the Senate, I intended to adopt as 
strong a measure as I could, consistently with the right of petition and a 
proper respect for the petitioners. I am the last man in the world who 
would, intentionally, treat these respectable constituents of my own with dis- 
respect. I know them well, and prize them highly. On a former occasion 
I did ample justice to their character. I deny that they are abolitionists. I 
cannot, however, conceive how any person could have supposed tliat it was 
disrespectful to them to refuse to grant their prayer in the first instance, and 
not disrespectful to refuse to grant it after their memorial had been referred 
to a committee. In the first case their memorial will be received by the 
Senate, and will be filed among the records of the country. That it has 
already been the subject of sufficient deliberation and debate; that it has 
already occupied a due portion of the time of the Senate, cannot be doubted 
or denied. Every one acquainted with the proceedings of courts of justice 
must know that often, very often, when petitions are presented to them, the 
request is refused without any delay. This is always done in a plain case by 
a competent judge. And yet who ever heard that this was treating the peti- 
tioner with disrespect? In order to be respectful to these memoriahsts, must 
we go through the unmeaning form, ia this case, of referring the memorial to a 
committee, and pretending to deliberate when we are now all fully prepared 
to decide ? 

I repeat, too, that I intended to make as strong a motion in this case as 
the circumstances would justify. It is necessary that we should use every 
constitutional effort to suppress the agitation which now disturbs the land. 
This is necessary, as much for the happiness and future prospects of the slave 
as for the security of the master. Before this storm began to rage, the laws 
in regard to slaves had been greatly ameliorated by the slave-holding States ; 
they enjoyed many privileges which were unknown in former times. In 
some of the slave States prospective and gradual emancipation was publicly 
and seriously discussed. Bat now, thanks to the abolitionists^ the slaves have 



330 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

been deprived of these privileges, and whilst the integrity of the Union is 
endano-ered, their prospect of final emancipation is delayed to an indefinite 
period. To leave this question where the Constitution has left it, to the 
slave-holding States themselves, is equally dictated by a humane regard for 
the slave as well as for their masters. 

There are other objections to the reference of this memorial to a commit- 
tee, which must, I think, be conclusive. I ask the Senate, after witnessing 
the debate upon the present question, to what conclusion could this commit- 
tee arrive ? If they attempted to assert any principle beyond the naked 
proposition before us, that the prayer of the memorialists ought not to be 
granted, we would be cast into a labyrinth of difficulties. It would be con- 
fusion worse confounded. If we wish to obtain a strong vote, and thus at 
the same time tranquilize the South and the North upon this exciting topic, 
the reference of it to a committee would be the most unfortunate course 
which we could adopt. Senators are divided into four classes on this ques- 
tion. The first believe that to abolish slavery in this District would be a vio- 
lation of the Constitution of the United States. Should the committee 
recommend any proposition of a less decided character, these Senators would 
feel it to be their duty to attempt to amend it, by asserting this principle ; and 
thus we should excite another dangerous and unprofitable debate. The 
second class, although they may not believe that the subject is constitutionally 
beyond the control of Congress, yet they think that the acts of cession from 
Maryland and Virginia to the United States forbid us to act upon the sub- 
ject. These gentlemen would insist upon the affirmance of this proposition. 
The third class would not go as far as either of the former. They do not be- 
lieve that the subject is placed beyond the power of Congress, either by the 
Constitution or by the compacts of cession, yet they are as firmly opposed to 
granting the prayer of the petition, whilst slavery continues to exist in Mary- 
land and Virginia, as if they held both these opinions. They know that these 
States never would have ceded this territory of ten miles square to the 
United States upon any other condition, if it had entered into their concep- 
tion that Congress would make an attempt, sooner or later, to convert it into 
a fi-ee district. Besides, they are convinced that to exercise this power, at an 
earlier period, would seriously endanger not only the peace and harmony of 
the Union, but its very existence. This class of Senators, wliilst they enter- 
tain these opinions, which ought to be entirely satisfactory to the South, 
could never consent to vote for a resolution declaring that to act upon the 
subject would be a violation of the Constitution or of the compacts. The 
fourth class, and probably not the least numerous, are opposed to the agita- 
tion of the question, under existing circumstances, and will vote against the 
abolition of slavery in this District at the present moment, but would be un- 
willing to give any vote which might pledge them for the future. Here are 
the elements of discord. Although we can all, or nearly all, agree in the 
general result, yet we should differ essentially in the means of arriving at it. 
The pohtic and the wise course, then, is, to adopt my motion that the prayer 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 331 

of the memorialists ought to be rejected. Each gentleman will arrive at this 
conclusion in his own way. Although we may thus travel different roads, 
we will all reach the same point. Should the committee go one step further 
than report this very proposition, we should at once be separated into four 
divisions; and the result must be that the whole subject would finally be laid 
upon the table, and thus the abolitionists would obtain a victory over the 
friends of the Union both to the North and to the South. 

Before I made the motion now before the Senate, I deliberately and 
anxiously considered all these embarrassing difficulties. At the first, I was 
under the impression that the reference of this subject to a committee would 
be the wisest course. In view of all the difficulties, however, I changed my 
opinion : and I am now willing, most cheerfully, to assume all the responsi- 
bility which may rest upon me for having made this motion. 

I might have moved to lay the memorial upon the table ; but I did not be- 
lieve that this would be doing that justice to the South which she has a right 
to demand at our hands. She is entitled to the strongest vote, upon the 
strongest proposition, which gentlemen can give, without violating their 
principles. 

I have but a few more words to say. As events have deprived me of the 
occupation assigned to me by the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Mangum), 
I feel myself at liberty to invade the province allotted by the same gentleman 
to the Senator from New York (Mr. Wright), and to defend a distinguished 
member of the Albany Regency. In this I am a mere volunteer. I choose 
thus to act because Governor Marcy has expressed my opinions better than I 
could do myself. 

And here, permit me to say that, in my judgment, Southern gentlemen 
who are not satisfied with his last message, so far as it relates to the abolition- 
ists, are very unreasonable. With the general tone and spirit of that message 
no one has found any fault ; no one can justly find any fault. In point of 
fact, it is not even liable to the solitary objection which has been urged 
against it, that he did not recommend to the legislature the passage of a law 
for the purpose of punishing those abolitionists who, in that State, should 
attempt to excite insurrection and sedition in the slaveholding States, by the 
circulation of inflammatory pubhcations and pictures. It is true that he does 
not advise *he immediate passage of such a law, but this was because he 
thought public opinion would be sufficient to put them down. He, however, 
looks to it as eventually proper, in case, contrary to his opinion, such a 
measure should become necessary to arrest the evil. He expressly asserts, 
and clearly proves, that the legislature possesses the power to pass such a law. 
This is the scope and spirit of his message. 

Ought he to have recommended the immediate passage of such a law ? I 
think not. The history of mankind, in all ages, demonstrates that the surest 
mode of giving importance to any sect, whether in politics or religion, is to 
subject its members to persecution. It has become a proverb, that "the 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." By persecution, religious 



332 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sects, maintaining doctrines the most absurd and the most extravagant — 
doctrines directly at war with the pure faith and principles announced to the 
world by the Divine Author of our religion, have been magnified into import- 
ance. I do not believe there is any State in this Union (unless the informa- 
tion which we have received from the Senators from Vermont might make 
that State an exception), where penal laws of the character proposed would 
not advance, instead of destroying the cause of the abohtionists. I feel con- 
fident such would be the event in Pennsylvania. Severe legislation, unless 
there is a manifest necessity for it, is always prejudicial. This question may 
be safely left to public opinion, which, in our age, and in our country, like a 
mighty torrent, sweeps away error. The people, although they may some- 
times be misled in the beginning, always judge correctly in the end. Let 
severe penal laws on this subject be enacted in any State — let a few honest 
but misguided enthusiasts be prosecuted under them — let them be tried and 
punished in the face of the country, and you will thus excite the sympathies 
of the people, and create a hundred abolitionists where one only now exists. 
Southern gentlemen have no right to doubt our sincerity on this subject, and 
they ought to permit us to judge for ourselves as to the best mode of allaying 
the excitement which they believe exists among ourselves. 

If the spirit of aboUtion had become so extensive and so formidable as 
some gentlemen suppose, we might justly be alarmed for the existence of this 
Union. Comparatively speaking, I believe it to be weak and powerless, 
though it is noisy. Without excitement got up here or elsewhere, which may 
continue its existence for some time longer, it will pass away in a short 
period, like the other excitements which have disturbed the public mind, and 
are now almost forgotten. 

On the 9 til of March (183 6) the following proceedings took 
place : 

The Senate proceeded to consider the petition of the Society of Friends in 
Philadelphia, on the subject of the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia. 

The question being on the motion " that the petition be not received " — 
Mr. Calhoun addressed the Senate in reply to what had fallen from other 
Senators on the subject. 

Mr. Clay made a few remarks in explanation, called for by some part of 
the remarks of the Senator from South Carolina. 

The question was then taken on the motion of Mr. Calhoun, " Shall the 
petition be received ? " and decided as follows : 

Yeas,— Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Clay, Clayton, Crittenden, 
Davis, Ewing of 111., Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Grundy, Hendricks, 
Hill, Hubbard, Kent, King of Ala., King of Ga., Knight, Linn, McKean, 
Morris, Naudain, Niles, Prentiss, Ptobbins, Robinson, Euggles, Shepley, 
Southard, Swift, Tallmadge, Tipton, Tomlinson, Wall, Webster, Wright.— 36. 



THE EIGHT OF PETITION. 333 

Nays.— Messrs. Black, Calhoun, Cuthbert, Leigh, Moore, Nicholas, Pres- 
ton, Porter, Walker, White, — 10. 

The question being next on the motion of Mr. Buchanan, to reject the 
prayer of the petition, 

Mr. Clay made some remarks on the motion, and concluded by moving to 
amend it by adding to it : — 

For the Senate, without now affirming or denying the constitutional 
power of Congress to grant the prayer of the petition, believes, even supposing 
the power uncontested, which it is not, that the exercise of it would be 
inexpedient ; 

1st. Because the people of the District of Columbia have not themselves 
petitioned for the abolition of slavery within the District. 

2d. Because the States of Virginia and Maryland would be injuriously 
affected by such a measure, whilst the institution of slavery continues to 
subsist within their respective jurisdictions, and neither of these States would 
probably have ceded to the United States the territory now forming the Dis- 
trict if it had anticipated the adoption of any such measure without clearly 
and expressly guarding against it. And, 

3d. Because the injury which would be inflicted by exciting alarm and 
apprehension in the States tolerating slavery, and by disturbing the harmony 
between them and the other members of the Confederacy, would far exceed 
any practical benefit wliich could possibly flow from the abolition of slavery 
within the District. 

Mr. Porter wished more time to reflect, and moved to lay the motion on 
the table, but withdrew it at the instance of Mr. Buchanan. 

Mr. Buchanan said that some remarks, both of the Senator from South 
Carolina (Mr. Calhoun), and of the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), com- 
pelled him to make a few observations in his own defence. 

Sir, said Mr. B., I rejoice at the result of the vote which has this day been 
recorded. It will forever secure to the citizens of this country, the sacred right 
of petition. The question has now been finally settled by a decisive vote of 
the Senate. The memorial which I presented from a portion of the highly 
respectable Society of Friends, has been received by a triumphant majority. 
Another happy consequence of this vote is, that abolition is forever separated 
from the right of petition. The abolitionists will now never be able to con- 
nect their cause with the violation of a right so justly dear to the people. 
They must now stand alone. This is the very position in which every friend 
of the Union, both to the North and the South, ought to desire to see them 
placed. 

From the remarks which have just been made by the Senators from South 
Carolina and Kentucky, it might almost be supposed that my motion to reject 
the prayer of the memorialists, was trifling with the right of petition, which, 
in the course of debate, I have defended with all my power. Is there the 
slightest foundation for such an imputation ? 

The memorial has been received by the Senate, and has been read. If this 



334 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

body are in doubt whether they will grant its prayer — if they wish further 
information upon this subject than what they already possess, then they ought 
to refer it. On the other hand, if every Senator has already determined how 
he will vote upon the question, why send the memorial to a committee ? It 
presents but one simple question for our decision. It asks us to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia. My motion proposes that this prayer 
shall be rejected. Now, is it not self-evident to every Senator upon this floor, 
that any committee which can be formed out of this body, will arrive at the 
same conclusion ? Why, then, refer this memorial to obtain a report, when 
'we already know what that report will be ? Why keep the question open for 
further agitation and debate ? Should it be referred to a committee, upon 
their report, we shall have the same ground to travel over again which we 
have been treading for so long a time. I have yet to learn that when a 
petition is presented to any tribunal, in a case so clear as not to require 
deliberation, that it is either disrespecttul to the petitioners, or that it infringes 
the right of petition, to decide against its prayer without delay. 

But in this case, powerful reasons exist why the memorial ought not to be 
referred. Although we all agree that slavery ought not to be abolished in the 
District of Columbia, yet we arrive at this conclusion by different courses of 
reasoning. Before I presented this memorial, I endeavored to ascertain from 
Senators whether it would be -possible to obtain a strong vote in favor of any 
proposition more specific in its terms than that now before the Senate. I 
found this would be impossible. I then made the motion to reject the prayer 
of the memorial, after much deliberation. 

I found the Senate divided upon this subject into four sections. One por- 
tion was opposed to the prayer of the memorial, because, in their opinion, it 
would be unconstitutional to grant it ; another, because it would violate our 
compacts of cession with Virginia and Maryland ; a third, because it would 
be inexpedient and unjust to abolish slavery in this District, whilst it exists in 
the surrounding States ; and a fourth, who were unwilling to go even to this 
extent, but who equally condemned its abolition at the present moment. 
Here were the elements of discord. Whilst all, or nearly all, are harmonious 
in their conclusion that the prayer of the petition ought not to be granted, 
their premises are far different. My object was to get the strongest vote, for 
the purpose of calming the agitation, both to the South and to the North. In 
order to accomplish this purpose, my motion must be one on which the largest 
majority could agree, and on which each member might vote for his own 
peculiar reasons. I ask what motion could I have made, so well calculated 
to attain the end, as the one now before the Senate ? 

The amendment which has just been proposed by the Senator from Ken- 
tucky will, I fear, prove to be the apple of discord in this body. It is too 
strong a measure for one portion of the Senate, whilst it is too weak for 
another. Those who believe that we have no power under the Constitution to 
abolish slavery in this District, will not vote for the amendment, because it does 
recognize this principle ; whilst such gentlemen as deem it inexpedient at the 



THE RIGHT OP PETITION. 335 

present time to act upon the subject, but who do not wish to commit them- 
selves for the future, will be equally opposed to the reasons which this amend- 
ment assigns. For my own part, individually, I should not object to the 
amendment. I could most cheerfully vote for all the principles which it con- 
tains. If I beUeved it would unite in its favor as large a majority of the 
Senate as the motion which I have made, unaccompanied by these reasons, 
it should have my support. But this, I am convinced, will not be the case ; 
and my purpose is to obtain the largest vote possible, because this will have 
the strongest influence upon public opinion. It would most effectually check 
the agitation upon this subject. 

Sir, said Mr. B., this question of domestic slavery is the weak point in our 
institutions. TarilTs may be raised almost to prohibition, and then they may 
be reduced so as to yield no adequate protection to the manufacturer; our 
Union is sufficiently strong to endure the shock. Fierce political storms may 
arise — the moral elements of the country may be convulsed by the struggles 
of ambitious men for the highest honors of the Government — the sunshine 
does not more certainly succeed the storm, than that all will again be peace. 
Touch this question of slavery seriously — let it once be made manifest to the 
people of the South that they cannot live with us, except in a state of con- 
tinual apprehension and alarm for their wives and their children, for all that 
is near and dear to them upon the earth, — and the Union is from that 
moment dissolved. It does not then become a question of expediency, but 
of self-preservation. It is a question brought home to the fireside, to the 
domestic circle of every white man in the Southern States. This day, this dark 
and gloomy day for the Republic, will, I most devoutly trust and believe, 
never arrive. Although, in Pennsylvania, we are all opposed to slavery in 
the abstract, yet we will never violate the constitutional compact which we 
have made with our sister States. Their rights will be held sacred by us. 
Under the Constitution it is their own question ; and there let it remain. 

Mr. Preston said there may be other reasons ; he had some which were 
stronger than those assigned, and he should vote against these, which con- 
tained a negative pregnant, looking to a state of things when Congress could 
act on the subject. 

Mr. Porter said one of his reasons for wishing to lay on the table the 
amendment was, that he might examine and ascertain if such reasons as 
would be satisfactory to him, so as to command his vote, could be assigned. 
He renewed his motion, and again withdrew it ; when 

Mr. Clay stated that he had no objection to let the amendment lie for 
further examination. 

After a few Avords from Mr. Cuthbert, on motion of Mr. Morris, the 
Senate adjourned. 

On the 11th of March, the following proceedings occurred : 

Mr. Leigh rose, and said that, in pursuance of the promise which he yester- 
day made to the Senate to move to resume the consideration of the abolition 



336 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

petition at the earliest moment that he should have decided what course hig 
duty required him to pursue in regard to tlie amendment which he yesterday 
offered to the motion for rejection, now moved that the Senate take up that 
subject. 

The motion having been agreed to, Mr. Leigh withdrew the amendment 
offered by him yesterday; and the question recurred on Mr. Buchanan'3 
motion that the prayer of the petition be rejected. 

[The following is a copy of the petition : 

To THE Senate and House of Eepkesentatives of the United States: 
The memorial of Cain Quarterly Meeting of the Eeligious Society of 
Friends, commonly called Quakers, respectfully represents : That, having long 
felt deep sympathy with that portion of the inhabitants of these United States 
which is held in bondage, and having no doubt that the happiness and 
interests, moral and pecuniary, of both master and slave, and our whole com- 
munity, would be greatly promoted if the inestimable right to liberty was 
extended equally to all, we contemplate with extreme regret that the District 
of Columbia, over which you possess entire control, is acknowledged to be 
one of the greatest marts for the traflBc in the persons of human beings in 
the known world, notwithstanding the principles of the Constitution declare 
that all men have an unalienable right to the blessing of liberty. 

We therefore earnestly desire that you will enact such laws as will secure 
the right of freedom to every human being residing within the constitutional 
jurisdiction of Congress, and prohibit every species of traffic in the persons 
of men. which is as inconsistent in principle, and inhuman in practice, as the 
foreign slave trade. 

Signed by direction, and on behalf of the aforesaid quarterly meeting, held 
in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, the 19th of 11 mo., 1835. 

Lixdlet Coats, 
Esther Hates, 

Clerks.] 

The yeas and nays were ordered on the question of rejection. 

Mr. McKean moved to amend the motion by striking out all after the word 
"that" — (namely, tlie words " the prayer of the petition to be rejected,") and 
inserting " it is inexpedient at this time to legislate on the subject of slavery 
in the District of Columbia." 

On this question the yeas and nays were ordered, on his motion. 

The question being taken, it was decided as follows: 

Teas — Messrs. Hendricks, McKean — 2. 

Nays— Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan, Clay, Crittenden, Cuth- 
bert, Davis, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Grundy, Hill, 
Hubbard, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Knight, Leigh, Linn, Nicholas, 
Nile?, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Swift, 
Tallmadge, Tipton, Tomlinson, AYalker, Wall, Webster, White, Wright— 37. 

Mr. McKean moved to amend the motion by inserting between the first 



THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 337 

word '' that " and the words " the prayer of the petition be rejected," the 
Avords " inexpedient to legislate on the subject of slavery in the District of 
Columbia, and that." 

On this question he called for the yeas and nays, which were ordered. 

The question was then taken, and decided as follows: 

Yeas — Messrs. Ewing of Ohio, Hendricks, McKean — 3. 

Nays — Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan, Clay, Crittenden, Cuth- 
bcrt, Davis, Ewing of Illinois, Goldsborough, G-rundy, Hill, Hubbard, King 
of Alabama, King of Georgia, Knight, Leigh, Linn, Moore, Niles, Nicholas, 
Preston, Porter, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Swift, Tallmadge, 
Tipton, Tomlinson, Walker, Wall, Webster, White. Wright— 36. 

The question being on the original motion of Mr. Buchanan, " that the 
prayer of the petition be rejected" — 

Mr. McKcan said that, in offering the amendments which he had proposed, 
he had discharged his conscience of an imperative duty. It had pleased the 
Senate to reject these amendments, and, as he was thus deprived of the 
power of making the motion more palatable, all that he could now do was to 
vote for the proposition of his colleague. 

Same day, after debate.— The question was then taken on the motion to 
reject the prayer of the petition, and decided as follows : 

Yeas — Messrs. Benton, Black, Brown, Buchanan, Clay, Crittenden, Cuth- 
bcrt, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Grundy, Hill, 
Hubbard, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Leigh, Linn, McKean, Moore, 
Nicholas, Niles, Porter, Preston, Robl^ins, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Tall- 
madge, Tipton, Tomlinson, Walker, Wall, White, Wright — 34. 

Nays — Messrs. Davis, Hendricks, Knight, Prentiss, Swift, Webster — 6. 

So the prayer of the petition was rejected. 

On the 25tli of April, Mr. Buchanan presented a petition 
from the Society of Friends, in Philadelphia, on which he said: 

He rose to present the memorial of the Yearly Meeting of the religious 
Society of Friends, which had been recently held in the city of Philadelphia, 
remonstrating against the admission of Arkansas into the Union, whilst a 
provision remained in her constitution which admits of and may perpetuate 
slavery. This Yearly Meeting embraced within its jurisdiction the greater 
part of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the whole of the State of Delaware, 
and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The language of this memorial was 
perfectly respectful. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, considering tlie 
source from which it emanated. It breathed throughout the pure and 
Christian spirit which had always animated the Society of Friends; and 
although he did not concur with them in opinion, their memorial was entitled 
to be received with great respect. 

When the highly respectable committee,* which had charge of this memorial, 

* Dr. Parrish, Wm. Wharton, Joseph Foulke, 

I.— 22 



338 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

called upon him this morning, and requested him to present it to the Senate, he 
had felt it to be his duty to inform them in what relation he stood to the question. 
He stated to them that he had been requested by the delegate from Arkansas to 
take charge of the application of that Territory to be admitted into the Union, 
and that he had cheerfully taken upon himself the performance of this duty. 
He also read to them the 8th section of the act of Congress of 6th March, 1820, 
containing the famous Missouri compromise; and informed them that the 
whole Territory of Arkansas was south of the parallel of 36 degrees and a half 
of north latitude ; and that he regai-ded this compromise, considering the excit- 
ing and alarming circumstances under which it was made, and the dangers to 
the existence of the Union ivhich it had removed, to he almost as sacred as a 
constitutional 2»'Ovision. That there might be no mistake on the subject, he 
had also informed them that in presenting their memorial he should feel it to 
be his duty to state these facts to the Senate. With this course on his part 
they were satisfied, and still continued their request that he might present 
the memorial. He now did so with great pleasure. He hoped it might be 
received by the Senate with all the respect it so highly deserved. He asked 
that it might be read ; and as the question of the admission of Arkansas was 
no longer before us, he moved that it might be laid upon the table. The 
memorial was accordingly read, and was ordered to be laid upon the table. 

The next time that the subject of slavery came before the 
Senate was in June, 1836. It then arose upon a bill which had 
been proposed in conformity with a special recommendation by 
President Jackson, in his annual message of December, 1835, 
to restrain the use of the mails for the circulation of incendiary 
jnihlicatlons. The bill contained the following provisions : 

Be it enacted, &c., That it shall not be lawful for any deputy postmaster, 
in any State, Territory, or District of the United States, knowingly to deliver 
to any person whatever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed 
paper or pictorial representation touching the subject of slavery, where, by 
the laws of the said State, Territory, or District, their circulation is prohibited ; 
and any deputy postmaster who shall be guilty thereof, shall be forthwith 
removed from office. 

Sec. 2. And he it further enacted, That nothing in the acts of Congress to 
establish and regulate the Post Office Department, shall be construed to pro- 
tect any deputy postmaster, mail carrier, or other officer or agent of said 
department, who shall knowingly circulate in any State, Territory, or District, 
as aforesaid, any such pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper 
or pictorial representation, forbidden by the laws of such State, Territory, or 
District. 

Sec 3. And he it further enacted hy the authority aforesaid, That the 
deputy postmasters of the offices where the pamphlets, newspapers, handbills, 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 339 

or other printed papers or pictorial representations aforesaid, may arrive for 
delivery, shall, under the instructions of the Postmaster General, from time to 
time give notice of the same, so that they may be v^^ithdrawn, by the person 
who deposited them originally to be mailed, and if the same shall not be 
withdravi^n in one month thereafter, shall be burnt or othervpise destroyed. 

This bill, on the 2d of June, 1836, was ordered to be en- 
grossed and read a third time, by the casting vote of Mr. Van 
Buren, the Yice-President. On the 8th of June the following 
debate and proceedings took place : 

Mr. Webster addressed the Senate at length in opposition to the bill, com- 
mencing his argument against what he contended was its vagueness and ob- 
scurity in not sufficiently defining what were the publications, the circulation 
of which it intended to prohibit. The bill provided that it should not be law- 
ful for any deputy postmaster, in any State, Territory, or District of the 
United States, knowingly to deliver to any person whatever, any pamphlet, 
newspaper, handbill, or other printed matter or pictorial representation, 
touching the subject of slavery, where by the laws of said State, District, or 
Territory, their circulation was prohibited. Under this provision Mr. W. 
contended that it was impossible to say what publications might not be pro- 
hibited from circulation. No matter vfhat was the publication, whether for 
or against slavery — if it touched the subject in any shape or form, it would 
fall under the prohibition. Even the Constitution of the United States might 
be prohibited ; and the person who was clothed with the power to judge in 
this delicate matter was one of the deputy postmasters who, notwithstanding 
the difficulties with which he was encompassed in coming to a correct decision 
must decide correctly, under pain of being removed from office. It would 
be necessary, also, he said, for the deputy postmasters referred to in this 
bill to make themselves acquainted with all the various laws passed by the 
States, touching this subject of slavery, and to decide them, no matter how 
variant they might be with each other. Mr. W. also contended that the bill 
conflicted with that provision in the Constitution which prohibited Congress 
from passing any law to abridge the freedom of speech or of the press. What 
was the liberty of the press? he asked. It was the liberty of printing as 
well as the liberty of publishing, in all the ordinary modes of publication , 
and was not the circulation of the papers through the mails an ordinary mode 
of publication ? He was afraid that they were in some danger of taking a 
step in this matter, that they might hereafter have cause to regret, by its 
bemg contended that whatever in this bill applies to publications touching 
slavery, applies to other publications that the States might think proper to 
prohibit; and Congress might, under this example, be called upon to pass laws 
to suppress the circulation of political, religious, or any other description of 
publications, which produced excitement in the States. Was this bill in 
accordance with the general force and temper of the Constitution and its 



340 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

anaendments ? It was not in accordance with that provision of the instru- 
ment, under which the freedom of speech and of the press was securea. 
Whatever laws the State Legislatures might pass on the subject, Congress 
was restrained from legislating in any manner whatever, with regard to the 
press. It would be admitted, that if a newspaper came directed to him, he 
had a property in it ; and how could any man, then, take that property and 
burn it without due form of law ? and he did not know how this newspaper 
could be pronounced an unlawful publication and having no property in it, 
without a legal trial. 

Mr. W. argued against the right to examine into the nature of publications 
sent to the post-office, and said that the right of an individual in his papers, 
was secured to him in every free country in the world. In England, it was 
expressly provided that the papers of the subject shall be free from all unreason- 
able searches and seizures — language, he said, to be found in our Constitution. 
This principle established in England, so essential to liberty, had been fol- 
lowed out in Trance, where the right of printing and publishing was secured 
in the fullest extent ; the individual publishing being amenable to the laws 
for what he published ; and every man printed and published what he pleased, 
at his peril. Mr. W. went on at some length to show that the bill was con- 
trary to that provision of the Constitution, wdiich prohibits Congress to pass 
any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. 

Mr. Buchanan said, that as he had voted for the engrossment of this bill, 
and should vote for its final passage, he felt himself bound to defend and 
justify his vote against the argument of the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Webster). In doing so, he would imitate that Senator, if in no other respect, 
at least in being brief. 

It is indispensable to the clear and distinct understanding of any argu- 
ment, to know precisely what is the question under discussion. Without this 
knowledge, we cannot tell whether in any or what degree the argument is 
applicable to the subject. What, then, is the naked question now under dis- 
cussion, stripped of all the mist which has been cast around it ? This bill 
embraced but a single principle, though this principle was carried out through 
three sections. It provides that deputy postmasters, within the limits of such 
slaveholding States as have found it necessary for their own safety to pass 
laws making it penal to circulate inflammatory publications and pictorial repre- 
sentations calcu'ated to excite the slaves to insurrection, shall not be protected 
by the laws of the United States, in violating these State laws. Postmasters 
within these States who shall Tcnoivingly distribute such publications are liable 
to be removed from office. The bill also provides that the post-office laws of 
the United States shall not protect postmasters, mail carriers, or other officers 
or agents of the department who shall knowingly circulate such incendiary 
publications, from the penalties denounced against this offence under the laws 
of the States. This is the spirit and principle of the bill. It does no more 
than to withdraw the protection of the laws of the United States, establishing 
the Post Office Department, from postmasters and other agents of this 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 341 

Government who shall wilfully transgress State laws deemed absolutely 
necessary to secure the States, within which they exist, from servile insur- 
rection. 

This bill did not aflfect, in the slightest degree, any of the non-slaveholding 
States, Neither did it apply to any of the slaveholding States, except those 
within which the danger of insurrection had become so imminent as to com- 
pel them to pass laws of the character referred to in the bill. 

Of the policy and justice of passing such a bill he could not doubt, provided 
we possess the power. No person would contend that this Government 
ought to become the instrument of exciting insurrection within any of the 
States, unless we were constrained to pursue this course by an overruling 
constitutional necessity. The question then is, does any such necessity exist? 
Are we bound by the Constitution of the United States, through our post- 
offices, to circulate publications among the slaves, the direct tendency of 
which is to excite their passions and rouse them to insurrection? Have we 
no power to stay our hand in any case ? Even if a portion of this Union 
were in a state of open rebellion against the United States, must we aid and 
assist the rebels by communicating to them, through our Post Office Depart- 
ment, such publications and information as may encourage and promote their 
designs against the very existence of the confederacy itself? If the Constitu- 
tion of the United States has placed us in this deplorable condition, we must 
yield to its mandates, no matter what may be the consequences. 

Mr. B. did not believe that the Constitution placed us in any such position. 
Our power over the mails was as broad and general as any words in the 
English language could confer. The Constitution declares that "Congress 
shall have power to establish post-offices and post roads." This is the only 
provision which it contains touching the subject. After the establishment of 
these post-offices and post roads, who shall decide upon the purposes for 
which they shall be used ? He answered. Congress, and Congress alone. 
There was no limitation, no restriction, whatever, upon our discretion con- 
tained in the bond. We have the power to decide what shall and what shall 
not be carried in the mail, and what shall be the rate of postage. He freely 
admitted that, unless in extreme cases, where the safety of the Republic was 
involved, we should never exercise this power of discrimination between 
what papers should and should not be circulated through the mail. The 
Constitution, however, has conferred upon us this general power, probably 
for the very purpose of meeting these extreme cases; and it is one which, 
from its delicate nature, we shall not be likely to abuse. 

He differed entirely from the opinion of the Senator from South Carolina 
(Mr. Calhoun), as to the source whence the power was derived to pass this 
bill. No action of the State Legislatures could either confer it or take it 
away. It was perfect and complete in itself under the Federal Constitution, 
or it had no existence. With that Senator he entirely concurred in opinion, 
that the sedition law was clearly unconstitutional. Congress have no power to 
abridge the freedom of the press, or to pass any law to prevent or to punish 



342 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

any publication whatever. He understood tlie freedom of the press to mean 
precisely what the Senator from Massachusetts had stated. But does it 
follow, as the gentleman contends, that because we have no power over the 
press, that therefore we are bound to carry and distribute anything and every- 
thing which may proceed from it, even if it should be calculated to stir up 
insurrection or to destroy the Government ? So far as this Government is 
concerned, every person may print, and pubhsh, and circulate whatever he 
pleases ; but are we, therefore, compelled to become nis agents, and to circu- 
late for him everything he may choose to publish ? This is the question. 
Any gentleman upon this floor may write what he thinks proper against my 
character ; but because he can exercise this liberty, am I therefore bound to 
carry and to circulate what he has written? So any individual within the 
broad limits of this Union, without previous restraint and without danger of 
punishment from the Federal Government, may pubhsh what is calculated to 
aid and assist the enemies of the country in open war ; but does it follow, as 
a necessary consequence, that this very Government is bound to carry and 
circulate such publications through its mails ? A more perfect non sequitur 
never had been presented to his mind. It was one thing not to restrain or 
punish publications ; it was another and an entirely different thing to carry 
and circulate them after they have been pubhshed. The one is merely passive ; 
the other is active. It was one thing to leave our citizens entirely free to 
print and publish and circulate what they pleased ; and it was another thing 
to call upon us to aid in their circulation. From the prohibition to make any 
law " abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," it could never be 
inferred that we must provide by law for the circulation through the post- 
ofl&ce of everything which the press might publish. And yet this is the 
argument both of the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from 
South Carolina. If this argument were well founded, it was very clear to his 
mind, that no State law could confer upon Congress any power to pass this 
bill. We derived our powers from the Federal Constitution, and from that 
alone. If, under its provisions, we have had no authority to pass the bill, we 
could derive jio such authority from the laws of the States. 

Why, then, did Mr. B. vote for a bill to prevent the circulation of publica- 
tions prohibited by State laws? Not because we derived any power from 
these laws ; but, under the circumstances, they contained the best rule to 
guide us in deciding what publications were dangerous. The States were the 
best judges of what was necessary for their own safety and protection; and 
they would not call for the passage of this bill, unless they were firmly con- 
vinced that the situation in which they were placed imperiously demanded it. 
They were willing to submit to a great evil in depriving themselves of infor- 
mation which might be valuable to them, in order to avoid the still greater 
evil that would result from the circulation of these publications and pictorial 
representations among their slaves. Such a law would not be permitted to 
exist after the necessity for it had ended. He was therefore willing, upon 
this occasion, to refer to the laws of the States, not for the purpose of 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 343 

conferring any power on Congress, but merely for a description of the pub- 
lications which it should be unlawful for our deputy-postmasters within these 
States to circulate. 

This bill was in strict conformity with the recommendations contained in 
the President's message on this subject, which had, he beheved, found favor 
everywhere. The principles of this message, which had been pronounced 
unconstitutional by the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun), had, he 
believed, been highly commended in a resolution passed by the legislature of 
that State. He would read an extract from the President's message : 

" In connection with these provisions in relation to the Post Oifice Depart- 
ment, I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in 
the South, by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals 
addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints, and in various sorts of pub- 
lications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection, and to produce all the 
horrors of a servile war. 

" There is, doubtless, no respectable portion of our countrymen who can 
be so far misled as to feel any other sentiment than that of indignant regret 
at conduct so destructive of the harmony and peace of the country, and so 
repugnant to the principles of our national compact, and to the dictates of 
humanity and religion. Our happiness and prosperity essentially depend 
upon peace within our borders — and peace depends upon the maintenance, in 
good faith, of those compromises of the Constitution upon which the Union 
is founded. It is fortunate for the country that the good sense, the generous 
feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of the people of the non-slaveholding 
States to the Union, and to their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the 
South, have given so strong and impressive a tone to the sentiments enter- 
tained against the proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in 
these unconstitutional and wicked attempts, and especially against the 
emissaries from foreign parts who have dared to interfere in this matter, as to 
authorize the hope, that those attempts will no longer be persisted in. But 
if these expressions of the public will shall not be sufficient to eifect so desir- 
able a result, not a doubt can be entertained that the non-slaveholding States, 
so far from countenancing the slightest interference with the constitutional 
rights of the South, will be prompt to exercise their authority in suppressing, 
so far as in them lies, whatever is calculated to produce this evil. 

" In leaving the care of other branches of this interesting subject to the 
State authorities, to whom they properly belong, it is nevertheless proper for 
Congress to take such measures as will prevent the Post Office Department, 
which was designed to foster an amicable intercourse and correspondence 
between all the members of the confederacy, from being used as an instru- 
ment of an opposite character. The General Government, to which the great 
trust is confided, of preserving inviolate the relations created among the 
States by the Constitution, is especially bound to avoid in its own action, any- 
thing that may disturb them. I would, therefore, call the special attention of 
Congress to the subject, and respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such 



344 LiFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern 
States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the 
slaves to insurrection." 

In reply to Mr. Webster, Mr. B. said, that he did not think there was any 
vat^ueness in that part of the bill on which the gentleman had commented, 
except what arose from the nature of the subject. It is vague, says the 
gentleman, because it contains no description of the publications, the circula- 
tion of which it intends to prohibit, except the words " touching the subject 
of slavery." On this foundation he had erected a considerable portion of his 
argument. Mr. B. acknowledged that if the bill contained no other descrip- 
tion than this, it would be impossible to carry it into execution. But this 
was not the fact. The subsequent language restricted this vague description ; 
because it confined the operation of the bill to such publications only, 
" touching the subject of slavery," as were prohibited from circulation by the 
laws of the respective States. 

We have, said Mr. B., wisely and properly referred, for the description of 
the offence, to the laws of the different States which will be embraced by the 
bill. It was just — it was politic — it was treating those States with a proper 
degree of respect, to make our law conform with their laws, and thus to take 
care that no conflict should arise between our deputy postmasters and their 
State authorities. Could the gentleman from Massachusetts himself make the 
bill more explicit ? He could not do it, consistently with the principles upon 
which it was founded, without incorporating into its provisions all the laws 
of all the States who had thought proper to pass laws upon this subject. 
Our deputy postmasters were resident citizens of those States. They were 
bound to know the State laws under which they lived, and all that this bill 
requires is, that they shall not violate them. 

The Senator from Massachusetts has contended that any newspaper which 
had been sent to an individual by mail, and was deposited in a post-office, was 
his property; and we had, therefore, no right to say it should not be 
delivered. But this was begging the question. It was taking that for granted 
which remained to be proved. If Congress, as he (Mr. B.) had contended, 
possessed the incontestable power of declaring what should and what should 
not be circulated through the mails, no man could have the right to 
demand from any post-offlce that which the law had declared should not thus 
be circulated. If we can, Avithout violating the Constitution, say that these 
inflammatory publications tending to excite servile war shall not be distri- 
buted by our postmasters among the individuals to whom they are directed, 
no question of property could then arise. No man can have a property in 
that which is a violation of the law. It then becomes a question, not of 
property, but of pubUc safety. Admit the gentleman's premises, that we have 
no right to pass any law upon this subject, and he can establish his position 
that a property exists in those publications whilst in the post-offices. With- 
out this admission, his argument entirely fails. 

He felt as reluctant as any man could feel, to vote for any law interfering 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 345 

with the circulation through the mails of any publication whatever, no matter 
what might be its character. But if the slaves within any Southern State 
were in rebellion, or if a palpable or well-founded danger of such a rebellion 
existed, with his present convictions, should he refuse to prevent the circula- 
tion of publications tending to encourage or excite insurrection, he would 
consider himself an accomplice in their guilt. He entertained no doubt what- 
ever of the power of Congress to pass this bill, or of the propriety of exer- 
cising that power. He would not have voted for the bill which had been 
reported by the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun) because he 
thought it a measure far beyond what was required by the necessity of the 
case. This bill, whilst it was sufficiently strong to correct the evil, would be 
confined in its operation to those States within which the danger existed. 

Mr. Davis (of Massachusetts) stated at length his objections to the passage of 
the bill. Senators assumed that there were no difficulties in the way, because 
the post-office power gave to Congress the right to decide what should be car- 
ried in the mails. On a former occasion he had said all that was proper in reo-ard 
to this matter. He then drew the attention of the Senate to the constitutional 
question involved, and demonstrated, as he thought, that there was no au- 
thority in the Constitution to pass this bill, or anything like it. The language 
of the Constitution was very simple : it only said that Congress should have 
the power to establish post-offices and post roads. Now what was a post- 
ofiice, in the meaning of the Constitution ? To understand this, it would be 
necessary to ascertain what was the meaning held at the time the Constitu- 
tion was adopted. You had a post-office at the time the Constitution was 
made, and a press also ; and the provision in the Constitution was made in 
reference to both these known things. The object in establishing the post- 
office, then, was to send abroad intelligence throughout the country ; and it 
was intended for the transmission of newspapers, pamphlets, judicial and 
legislative proceedings, and all matters emanating from the press, relating to 
politics, literature, and science, and for the transmission of private letters. It 
would be, therefore, in his opinion, in conflict with the provision of the Con- 
stitution, giving Congress the power to establish the post-office, as well as an 
abridgment of the freedom of the press, to carry into effect the provisions 
of the bill. 

The Senator from Pennsylvania reiterated the argument used the other 
day by his friend from Georgia, that you have no right to dififuse publications 
through the agency of the post-office, for the purpose of exciting a servile war. 
Now let me tell the gentleman, (said Mr. D.) that this is an old argument 
against the liberty of the press, and that it has been used whenever it was 
thought necessary to establish a censorship over it. The public morals were 
said to be in danger ; it was necessary to prevent licentiousness, tumult, and 
sedition ; and the public good required that the licentiousness of the press 
should be restrained. All these were the plausible pretences under which the 
freedom of the press had been violated in all ages. Now they knew that the 
press was at all times corrupt ; but when they came to decide the question 



346 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

whether the tares should be rooted up, and the wheat along with it, those 
who had decided in favor of liberty, had always decided that it was better 
to put up with a lesser evil than to draw down upon themselves one of such 
fearful magnitude, as must result from the destruction of the press. Mr. D. 
contended that the power to be given to the deputy postmasters to decide 
what should, and what should not be distributed from the post-office, gave 
them a dangerous discretion over a very delicate matter, and that the power 
was one highly susceptible of abuse, and always liable to misconstruction. 

Mr. Grundy (of Tennessee) observed that this bill was intended simply to 
prevent any officer of the G-overnment, who should violate the laws of the States 
in which he resided, from sheltering himself under the post-office law. As the 
bill now stood, the objections with regard to abridging the freedom of the 
press had no application whatever. There was no provision in the bill inter- 
fering with the printing or publishing of any matter whatever, nor was it 
even pretended that Congress possessed the power of doing so. It was not 
even said that certain publications, no matter how incendiary in their charac- 
ter, should not be deposited in the post-office, and transmitted though the 
mails. Therefore all the objections that he had heard to the bill fell to the 
ground. In this bill, the Government simply said to the individuals in its 
employ, " We will not help you to do an act in violation of the laws of the 
State in which you live." That was the ground on which the bill was framed, 
and it could not be pretended that this was an abridgment of the liberty of 
the press. It was only the Government declining to assist an individual in 
the violation of the law, and that was the whole bill. The Government, 
under the Constitution, had an entire control of the Post-Office Department. 
It had the power to regulate what matters should be carried though the 
mails, and what should not. We say to everybody that to these slaveholding 
States you may transmit through the mails what you please, but if you trans- 
mit to one of our officers what is prohibited by the laws of the State in 
which he resides, we shall say to that officer, you shall not put on the mantle 
of the Government to assist you in the violation of that law ; you shall be 
subject to the penalties of the State laws, besides removal from office. In 
fact there was not the slightest pretext for saying that this bill violates in the 
remotest degree the freedom of the press. Nothing should be carried in the 
mails but what was proper for transmission through them ; but if there was 
anything sent through them tending to excite insurrection and bloodshed, how 
could there be an objection to the passage of a law, saying that it should not 
be delivered out of the post-office ? 

The gentleman from Massachusetts objected to the vagueness of the bill 
in saying what shall not be distributed from the post-offices. How could the 
matter, lie asked, be made more specific ? When the publication arrived at 
the post-office where it was prohibited, and was about to be handed out, the 
State law would be consulted, and by it, it would be decided whether it was 
in violation of the State law or not, and it could thus be determined whether 
it was proper for delivery. He should not say anything as to the report— he 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 347 

did not concur in it farther than tliat this was a great evil, and sliould be cor- 
rected in the mildest way that it could be done. This bill did not affect any 
individual but those of the post-offices of the States where laws have been 
passed prohibiting publications and pictorial representations, calculated to 
excite insurrection among the slaves. He was opposed to the original bill, 
because it interfered with what publications should be deposited in, as well as 
delivered from, the post-offices. But it was only at the delivery office where 
this bill would operate, and the postmaster at such office would be operated 
on by the laws of the State in which it is situated. If this bill was not 
passed, nothing could be done, and the post-office would be made (for there 
Avere persons Avicked enough to do it) the medium through which to send 
fire-brands throughout the country. 

Mr. Clay said that he considered this bill totally unnecessary and uncalled 
for by public sentiment ; and in this he differed with the Senator from Penn- 
sylvania (Mr. Buchanan) ; for he believed that the President's message on the 
subject had met with general disapprobation; that it was unconstitutional; 
and if not so, that it contained a principle of a most dangerous and alarming 
character. When he saw that the exercise of the most extraordinary and 
dangerous power had been assumed by the head of the post-office, and that 
it had been sustained by this message, he turned his attention to the subject 
and inquired Avhether it was necessary that the General Government should, 
under any circumstances, exercise such a power, and whether it possessed it; 
and after much reflection, he had come to the conclusion, that they could not 
pass any law interfering with the subject in any shape or form Avhatever. 

The evil complained of was the circulation of papers having a certain ten- 
dency. The papers, unless circulated, did no harm, and Avhile in the post- 
office or in the mail — it was a circulation solely which constituted the evil. 
It was the taking them out of the mail, and the use that Avas to be made of 
them, that constituted the mischief — Then it Avas perfectly competent to the 
State authorities to apply the remedy. The instant that a prohibited paper 
was handed out, Avhether to a citizen or sojourner, he was subject to the laAvs 
which might compel him either to surrender them or burn them. He con- 
sidered the bill not only unnecessary, but as a laAV of a dangerous, if not a 
doubtful authority. 

It Avas objected that it was vague and indefinite in its character ; and how 
is that objection gotoA'er? The bill provided that it shall not be laAvful for 
any deputy postmaster, in any State, Territory, or District of the United 
States, knoAvingly to dehver to any person Avhatever, any pamplilet, news- 
paper, handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial representation, touching 
the subject of slaA'ery, where, by the laAvs of said State, Territory, or District, 
their circulation is prohibited. Noav, what could be more vague and indefinite 
than this description ? Now, could it be decided by this description, what 
publications should be withheld from distribution? The gentleman from 
Pennsylvania said that the laws of the States Avould supply the omission. He 
thought the Senator was premature in saying that there would be a precision 



348 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

in State laws, before he showed it by producing the law. He had seen no 
such law, and he did not know whether the description in the bill was appli- 
cable or not. There was another objection to this part of the bill: it applied 
not only to the present laws of the States, but to any future laws they might 
pass. 

Mr. C. denied that the bill applied to the slaveholding States only, and 
went on to argue that it could be applied to all the States, and to any pub- 
lication touching the subject of slavery whatever, whether for or against it, 
if such publication was only prohibited by the laws of such State. Thus, for 
instance, a non-slaveholding State might prohibit publications in defence of 
the institution of slavery, and this bill would apply to it as well as to the 
laws of the slaveholding States; but the law would be inoperative: it 
declared that the deputy postmaster should not be amenable, unless he know- 
ingly shall deliver, etc. Why, the postmaster might plead ignorance, and of 
course the law would be inoperative. 

But he wanted to know whence Congress derived the power to pass this 
law. It was said that it was to carry into cfTect the laws of the States. 
Where did they get such authority ? He thought that their only authority to 
pass laws was in pursuance of the Constitution ; but to pass laws to carry 
into effect the laws of the States, was a most prolific authority, and there 
was no knowing where it was to stop : it would make the legislation of Con- 
gress dependent upon the legislation of twenty-four different sovereignties. 
He thought the bill was of a most dangerous tendency. The Senator from 
Pennsylvania asked if the post-office power did not give them the right to 
regulate what should be carried in the mails. Why, there was no such power 
as that claimed in the bill ; and if they passed such a law, it would be exer- 
cising a most dangerous power. Why, if such doctrine prevailed, the 
Grovernment might designate the persons, or parties, or classes who should 
have the benefit of the mails, excluding all others. 

It was too often in the condemnation of a particular evil that they were 
urged on to measures of a dangerous tendency. All must agree as to the 
dangerous consequences of persons residing out of certain States transmitting 
to them incendiary publications, calculating to promote civil war and blood- 
shed. All must see the evil, and a great evil it was, and he hoped that a 
stop would be put to it; but Congress had no power to pass beyond the Con- 
stitution for the purpose of correcting it. The States alone had the power, and 
their power was ample for the purpose. He hoped never to see the time 
when the General G-overnment should undertake to correct the evil by such 
measures as the one before them. If (said Mr. C.) you can pass this law to 
prohibit the delivery through the post-office of publications touching the sub- 
ject of slavery, might they not also pass laws to prohibit any citizen of New 
York or Massachusetts from publishing and transmitting through the mails 
touching that subject? If you may touch the subject of slavery at all, why 
not go to the root of the evil? Suppose one of the Southern States were to 
pass a law of this kind, would you not be called upon by all the arguments 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 349 

now used in favor of this bill, to carry such laws into eflfect? Mr. C. con- 
cluded by saying that the bill was calculated to destroy all the landmarks of the 
Constitution, establish a precedent for dangerous legislation, and to lead to 
incalculable mischief. There was no necessity for so dangerous an assump- 
tion of authority, the State laws being perfectly competent to correct the evil 
complained of. He must say, that from the first to the last he was opposed 
to the measure. 

Mr. Calhoun could not concur with the views taken by the Senators from 
Massachusetts and Kentucky, that this bill would comprehend in its provi- 
sions all publications touching the subject of slavery. In order to bring any 
publications within the provision of the bill, two qualifications were necessary. 
The first was, that it must relate to the subject of slavery ; and the next was, 
that it must be prohibited by the laws of the States to which it is transmitted. 
He thought that this was the view that would be taken of it by the courts. 
The object of this bill was to make it the duty of the postmasters in the States 
to conform to the laws of such States, and not to deliver out papers in viola- 
tion of their laws. The simple question was, had this Government the power 
to say to its officers, you shall not violate the laws of the States in which you 
reside? Could it go further, and make it their duty to co-operate with the 
States in carrying their laws into effect? This was the simple question. Now 
could any man doubt that Congress possessed the power to pass both meas- 
ures, so that their officers might not come in conflict with the State laws? 
Indeed, he looked upon measures of this kind to prevent conflicts between 
the General and State Governments, which were likely to ensue, as essentially 
necessary, for it was evident that when such conflicts took place, the State 
must have the ascendancy. Mr. C. then briefly recapitulated the principles 
on which this bill was founded, and contended that it was in aid of laws passed 
by the States, as far as Congress had the power constitutionally to go, and 
assumed no power to prohibit or interfere with the publication or circulation 
of any paper whatever ; it only declared, that the officers of the Government 
should not make their official stations a shield for violating the State laws. 
Was there any one there who would say, that the States had not the power 
to pass laws prohibiting, and making penal, the circulation of papers calcu- 
lated to excite insurrection among their slaves ? It being admitted that they 
could, could not Congress order its officers to abstain from the violation of 
these laws? We do not (said Mr. C.) pass a law to abridge the freedom of 
the press, or to prohibit the publication and circulation of any paper whatever 
— this has been done by the States already. The inhibition of the Constitution 
was on Congress, and not on the States, who possessed full power to pass 
any laws they thought proper. They knew that there were several prece- 
dents to sanction this bill. Congress had passed laws to abstain from the 
violation of the health laws of the States. Could any one say that the Consti- 
tution gave to Congress the power to pass quarantine laws ? He had not 
adverted to the message of the President on this subject, because he believed 
that the President acted from the best motives, and that that part of the mes- 



350 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN, 

sage was drawn up Avithout sufficient reflection. He denied, however, that 
this message was in conformity with the Constitution. It would be directly 
abridging the liberty of the press for Congress to pass such laws as the Presi- 
dent recommended. One part of the message he would refer to, which was 
in these words : 

" I would, therefore, call the special attention of Congress to the subject, 
and respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will prohibit, 
under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the 
mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." 
This was clearly unconstitutional, for it not only recommended the prohibition 
of publications and circulation of incendiary papers (abridging the freedom of 
the press), but it recommended also the infliction of severe penalties, which 
powers were expressly prohibited by the Constitution. On no other principle 
could this ever be defended, than that it was simply abstaining from a viola- 
tion of the laws of the States. 

The Senator from Kentucky contended that this bill was useless, and he 
(Mr. C.) agreed that it was so in one sense, and that was, with or without 
this bill, the Southern States would execute their own laws against the circu- 
lation of such papers. It was a case of life and death with them ; and did 
anybody suppose that they would permit so many magazines in their bosoms, 
to blow them to destruction, as these post-offices must be, if these incendiary 
publications continued to be circulated through them ? While the Southern 
States contained so many postmasters opposed to their institutions, as it was 
m his own State, where almost every postmaster was opposed to it, it was 
absolutely necessary for them to take effectual measures for their own security. 
It was the assertion of the principle, that the States had a right to protect 
themselves, which made the bill valuable in his eye ; it prevented the conflict 
which would be likely to take place between the General and State Govern- 
ments, unless some measure of the kind should be adopted. The States had a 
right to go to the extent of this bill, and they would be wanting to them- 
selves and to posterity, if they omitted to do it. It was on the doctrine of 
State rights and State intervention, that he supported this bill, and on no 
other grounds. 

The Senator from Massachusetts objected to the returning of these papers, 
whose delivery was prohibited. He regretted this as much as the Senator 
did, but his objection was, that it did not go far enough ; he thought that 
these papers should be delivered to the prosecuting officers of the States, to 
enable them to ferret out the designs of the incendiaries. 

Mr. Webster remarked, that in general, it might be safely said, that when 
different gentlemen supported a measure admitted to be of a novel character, 
and placed their defence of it on different and inconsistent grounds, a very 
simple person might believe, in such case, that there were no very strong 
grounds for adopting the measure. The Senator from Pennsylvania and the 
Senator from South Carolina not only placed their defence of their bill on 
opposite grounds, but each opposed the principles on which the other founded 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 351 

his support of it. Where the object to be gained was apparently good, and 
the case urgent, as it was represented to be, how could hmitations of power 
stand against powerful opponents, which have always been urging to des- 
potism? Now, against the objects of this bill, he had not a word to say; 
but with constitutional lawyers, there was a great difference between the 
object and the means to carry it into effect. It was not the object to be 
gained, but the means to attain it, which they should look to, for though the 
object might be good, the means might not be so. His objections went to 
the means and not to the object; and he did not yield the argument because 
the object was a good one, and the case was urgent. It was better to limit 
the power, and run the risk of injury from the want of it, than to give a 
power which might be exercised in a dangerous manner. 

The Senator from Pennsylvania said that this bill was calling on Congress 
to do nothing but to abstain from violating the laws of the States. It was 
one thing, said the Senator, for Congress to abstain from giving these incen- 
diary papers circulation, and another to pass laws saying that they shall not 
be published. But if Congress had no mail through which these papers could 
be transmitted, what did the gentleman mean by Congress abstaining from 
giving them circulation ? It meant that Congress should interfere and should 
create an especial exception as to what should be transmitted by their 
ordinary channel of intelligence, and that that exception should be caused by 
the character of the writing or publication. He contended that Congress had 
not the power, drawn from the character of the paper, to decide whether it 
should be carried in the mail or not, for such decision would be a direct 
abridgment of the freedom of the press. He confessed that he was shocked 
at the doctrine. He looked back to the alien and sedition laws which were 
so universally condemned throughout the country, and what was their object ? 
Certainly to prohibit publications of a dangerous tendency. Mr. W. here 
quoted the sedition law, to show the objects it intended to effect. But the 
deputy postmasters (Mr. W. said) must look into the newspaper mail to see 
if there were any publications in it touching the subject of slavery calculated 
to excite insurrections among the slaves. 

Now, said Mr. W., the country would have been rent into atoms if the 
sedition law, instead of saying that papers should not be published in such 
and such a way, had declared that the deputy postmasters should have the 
power to search the mails to see if they contained any pubhcations calculated 
to " bring the Government into disrepute, promote insurrection, and lead to 
foreign war," the evils the sedition law intended to guard against. All the 
papers described in the law of '99 were unlawful by the laws of any of the 
States, and yet that law which had created so much excitement and met with 
such general reprobation, contained nothing hke the power claimed by this 
bill. Any law distinguishing what shall or shall not go into the mails, founded 
on the sentiments of the paper, and making the deputy postmaster the judge, 
he should say, was expressly unconstitutional, if not recommended by gentle- 
men of such high authority. This bill (said Mr. W.) went beyond the 



352 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

recommendation of the President, for his recommendation was, that the person 
who circulated the papers described by him should be punished by severe 
penalties. Now, this was the old law of hberty — there was not a word of 
previous restraint in it as imposed by this bill. Mr. W. then went into an 
argument to show the vagueness of the bill in describing the paper, the deliv- 
ery of wliich was prohibited. Under it, it was impossible to determine what 
publications should be prohibited ; abolition pamphlets were to be stoi:)ped at 
the South, and anti-abolition papers were to be stopped at the North. In 
reply to Mr. Buchanan, he said that he did not assume that these prohibited 
publications either were or were not property. All he said was, that they 
ought not to make the deputy postmasters the judge, and take away the 
property without the authority of law. What he had to say was, that it was 
a question of property or no property, and that they could not make the 
deputy postmaster the judge of the fact, as he could not be a judge of prop- 
erty known to the Constitution and the law. 

Mr. Buchanan said he had not anticipated, when he fii-st addressed the 
Senate upon this subject, that he should have occasion to make any further 
remarks, but the Senator from Massachusetts had replied to his argument, in 
such a special manner, that he felt himself constrained to reply to some of his 
remarks. Now, permit me to say (continued Mr. B.) that he has not at all 
met the point of my argument. He has invested this subject with an air of 
greater importance and responsibility than it deserves : he has played around 
it with all his powers, but without touching the real question involved in the 
discussion. 

Congress has no power (says the gentleman) to pass any law abridging the 
freedom of speech or of the press. Granted. He most freely admitted that 
Congress had no power to touch the press at all. We can pass no law what- 
ever either to prevent or to jDunish any publication, under any circumstances 
whatever. The sedition law violated this principle. It punished libels against 
the Federal Government and its officers ; and having met with general repro- 
bation, it was repealed, or permitted to expire by its own limitation, he did 
not recollect which. 

Mr. B. said he admitted these premises of the gentleman in their broadest 
extent ; but did they justify his conclusions ? In order to maintain his argu- 
ment, he must prove that the Constitution, in declaring that Congress shall 
not pass any law abridging the freedom of the press, has thereby, and from 
the force of these terms alone, commanded us to circulate and distribute, 
through our post-offices, everything v/hich the press may publish, no matter 
whether it shall promote insurrection and civil war or not. This is the propo- 
sition which he must establish. All the gentleman's remarks in favor of the 
liberty of the press met his cordial approbation ; but they did not apply to 
the constitutional question then under discussion. He had argued this ques- 
tion precisely as if, in addition to the words already in the Constitution, that 
'• Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," 
there had been inserted, " or to prevent the circulation of any production of 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 353 

the press through the post-offices." But these words were not in the instru- 
ment ; and the only question was, whether the one prohibition could be in- 
ferred from the other. Llr. B. said he was in favor of a plain and literal 
construction of the Constitution. He took it for his guide; and he could 
never consent to interpolate what its framers never intended should be there. 
They have conferred upon Congress, in express terms, a general discretion in 
regard to the Post Office Department ; and the question then was, shall we 
exercise it in the manner proposed by this bill, for the purpose of preventing 
servile war, bloodshed and disunion? 

How had the gentleman from Massachusetts met his argument ? He says 
that the principles upon which the Senator from South CaroUna (Mr. Calhoun) 
and himself had sustained this bill, were at variance with each other; and 
that this of itself was sufficient to cast doubt over the measure. But was it 
the first time the gentleman had known correct conclusions to be drawn from 
varying or even unfounded premises ? The bill itself ought not to be con- 
demned for the arguments of its friends. He would remind the gentleman 
of the advice given by a distinguished English judge, to a young friend about 
to occupy a judicial station in the West Indies, which was, never to give 
reasons for his judgments, where it could be avoided; because his natural 
sense and perception of justice would almost always enable him to decide 
correctly, though be might, and probably often would, assign insufficient 
reasons for his decisions. This bill ought to be judged by its own provisions, 
and ought not to be condemned for the reasons in support of it which had 
been advanced either by the Senator from South Carolina or himself. 

The Senator from Massachusetts had argued as though he (Mr. B.) had 
said, that as the end proposed by this measure was good, he should vote for 
it, notwithstanding the means might be unconstitutional. 

[Here Mr. Webster explained, and said he had not imputed to Mr. B. such 
an argument.] 

Mr. B. proceeded. The Senator did not mean this imputation ; but his 
argument seemed to imply as much. However necessary he might believe 
this bill to be, if he did not find a clear warrant for its passage in the Consti- 
tution, it should never have his support. He never could beheve that this 
Government, having exclusive control over the Post-Office Department in all 
its various relations, was yet so impotent to prevent evil, that it must, under 
the fundamental law which called it into existence, whether it would or not, 
distribute pubUcations tending directly to promote servile insurrection, and to 
produce its own destruction. 

The Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) had misapprehended him 
in one particular. He (Mr. B.) had disclaimed all authority to pass this bill 
derived from State laws, or from any other source than the Constitution of 
the United States. He had not said he would vote for a similar bill in all 
cases where the State Legislatures might think proper to pass laws to pro- 
hibit the circulation of any publication whatever. He considered the passage 
of such laws merely as evidence of the necessity for legislation by Congress ; 

I.— 23 



354 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

but he was very far from adopting the principle that it should be conclusive 
evidence in all cases. Congress must judge for itself under all the circum- 
stances of each particular case. 

In reply to the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. B. said that this bill 
would not be a penal law. Everything like a penalty had been stricken from 
its provisions, unless the removal of a deputy postmaster from office by the 
Postmaster General might be viewed in that light. By it we merely directed 
our agent not to violate State laws by distributing publications calculated to 
excite insurrection. He would not have occasion to study all the laws of all 
the States on the subject of slavery, as the Senator from Massachusetts had 
alleged. All that would be required of him was to know the laws of the 
State of which he was a citizen, and to take care not to violate tliem. 

The gentleman had said that he (Mr. B.) had mistaken the recommenda- 
tion contained in the President's message. Now he undertook to assert that 
this bill was in conformity with the recommendation of the President, and 
carried it out in all essential particulars. 

[Here Mr. B. again read the last paragraph of the message which he had 
read before.] 

Now, sir, (said Mr. B.) does not the President expressly assert that Con- 
gress has authority to regulate what shall be distributed through the post- 
offices, and does he not " suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will 
prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through 
the mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insur- 
rection ? " Except that this bill contained no severe penalties, it was framed 
both in its spirit and in its letter according to the suggestion of the President. 
What other bill could we pass of a milder character than the one now before 
us, to prevent the circulation of these incendiary publications? Let the 
President's recommendation be entitled to what weight it might, this bill Avas 
in exact accordance with it. 

The Senator from Massachusetts had contended that this bill conferred 
upon deputy postmasters the power of depriving individuals of their property 
in newspapers and other publications, in violation of that clause in the Con- 
stitution, which declares that no person shall be deprived of his property 
without due process of law. By this bill we had not attempted to shield any 
postmaster from legal responsibity for his conduct. We could not do so, if 
we would. We had merely prescribed for him, as we had done for our other 
agents, the line of his duty. We did not attempt to protect him from the 
suit of any person who might consider himself aggrieved. If any individual 
to whom a pubhcation was directed, and who had demanded it from the post- 
master and had been refused, should beUeve our law to be unconstitutional, he 
might bring this question before the judiciary, and try it, like any other ques- 
tion. All our officers and agents are liable to be sued, and if the law under 
which they acted should prove to be unconstitutional, it would afford them no 
protection. On the present occasion we proposed to proceed in the spirit of 
the common law principle, that any individual may abate a nuisance ; though 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 355 

he thereby rendered himself responsible, in case it should appear afterwards 
that the thing abated was not a nuisance. So here, the postmaster refusing 
to deliver a newspaper under our law, would be responsible in damages to 
the party aggrieved, in case it should appear that the law under which he had 
acted was unconstitutional. 

As to the necessity for passing this bill, he should say but a few words. It 
was very easy for gentlemen to say that necessity was the plea of tyrants. 
He admitted it had been so, and would be so in all time to come. But after 
all, if we possessed the power to legislate in this case, from our situation Ave 
were compelled to judge whether it was necessary to call it into efficient action 
or not. This duty devolved upon us. We could not avoid deciding this 
question. Was it not, then, within our knowledge that the slaveholding 
States had been attempted to be flooded with pamphlets and pictorial repre- 
sentations calculated to excite servile insurrection ? Had we not seen upon 
this floor many of these pictorial representations, whose direct effect would 
be to excite tlie wild and brutal passions of the slaves to cut the throats of 
their masters? Within the last few months, had there not been blood shed? 
and had there not been several attempted insurrections in some of the 
Southern States? These facts were incontestable. Believing and knowing 
all this to be true, he said the case of necessity, in his judgment, was fully 
established, and he should vote for the passage of the bill. 

Mr. Cuthbert (of Georgia) was not desirous to throw himself into the current 
of this debate at this time. The position which he held — the infrequency of his 
occupying that floor, and the indisposition under which he labored, authorized 
him to expect the attention of the Senate for a short time, when he should be 
better able to address them than he then was. He therefore hoped the Sen- 
ate would indulge him in an opportunity of being heard on the subject, by 
postponing it, to be taken up within a very short period. It appeared to 
him that the Senator from Pennsylvania had said precisely what should have 
been said in support of this bill. It appeared to him that that Senator had 
given an unanswerable reply to the Senator from Massachusetts on points 
on which he principally relied for his opposition to the measure before them. 
What is the state of the case (said Mr. C.)? The deputy postmaster in one 
of the States holds in his hand an incendiary publication, intended to carry 
blood and desolation through the land. Is he bound in duty to hold it from 
circulation ? If he gives it to another, the evil intended by that publication 
will ensue ; but then your officer, contends the Senator from Massachusetts, 
is bound to deliver it, because you have no power to pass a law abridging 
the freedom of the press. According to this doctrine, that which an individual 
cannot do, your officer is bound to do. It appeared to him that the obvious 
necessity of this law was to prevent the post-office agents from committing a 
criminal offence against the laws of the States, and then shielding themselves 
under the post-office law. But the Senator from Massachusetts had not met 
this point, but had rather evaded and played around it. This was a question 
which should not be discussed with the chicanery of a pettifogging lawyer, 



356 L^FE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

but should be considered with those enlarged ideas and noble sentiments 
which belong to the statesman. They should argue it as became enlightened 
patriots, anxious to promote harmony and good feeling through our common 
country, and to preserve all its parts from the dangers of insurrection. 

He denied that property could be affected by this law, as contended by the 
Senator from Massachusetts. There could be no property in these incendiary 
publications. The postmaster holds in his hand that which, by the laws of 
the States, is in the condition of stolen property, and he is bound to give it 
back. He holds in his hand what, by his own judgment, he considers not to be 
property — which his own judgment condemns, and he is therefore bound to 
resign it. The Senator from Massachusetts said, rightly, that the person to 
whom this publication is directed may come forward and demand it, under 
the provision of this law. Now, if the Senator thought there was anything 
wanting in this provision of the bill, why did he not propose an amendment ? 
If he did propose any, he (Mr. C.) had not heard it. The property is not to 
be destroyed ; it must be returned to him who sent it. 

In another point of view (Mr. C. said), the postmaster must judge whether 
these papers are legal or not. He holds in his hand papers which the laws of 
his State have said shall not be circulated, under a penalty. Is he not to 
decide whether he shall incur that penalty or not ? How stood the argument 
of the Senator from Massachusetts ? He requires that the officer shall violate 
the laws of his State, or that the General Government shall protect him in it. 
With regard to the members that compose the Senate, every gentleman was 
conscious in his own breast of a strong desire to prevent the evils of a servile 
war in the Southern States. Of this he was confident. But with regard to 
the Senator from Massachusetts, he should be guilty of a want of candor if 
he allowed him that clearness of judgment which belonged to the statesman; 
he should be wanting in that sincerity of heart on which he had ever prided 
himself, if he declared his conviction that the honorable Senator had treated 
this subject with the liberal and impartial spirit it deserved. The gentleman's 
course had uniformly been opposed to all those measures which tended to 
quiet the country, and heal those sectional dissensions which disturb the 
Union. 

When a large and overwhelming vote was taken in the Senate, on the 
motion of the Senator from Pennsylvania, believed by all to be so necessary 
to settle a question, threatening the most fearful consequences, it was held to 
be highly desirable that there should be an unanimous vote. Yet, on an 
occasion when the Senator could well have shown a desire to harmonize and 
conciliate, his vote was found in the negative. Again, the Senator from 
Massachusetts had put forth a paper calculated to excite great distrust in the 
body of the people affected by it. He alluded to the resolutions adopted at a 
meeting held in Boston on the subject of slavery, of which the gentleman 
was said to be the author, in which it was declared that Congress had the 
power to regulate the transfer of slaves from one State to another. Mr. C. 
said that he had addressed the Senate but seldom, and as he wished to be 



INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS. 357 

heard on this subject more at large, -when his health was better and under 
more favorable circumstances, he hoped the Senate would indulge him by 
a postponement. 

Mr. "Webster said that he had heard the remarks of the Senator from 
Georgia (Mr. Cuthbert) with attention and with respect ; and considering his 
speech of a personal character, it became him to notice it; but as the gentle- 
man proposed to discuss this subject more at large Avhen his health was better, 
and, as he said, under circumstances less tending to irritation, he should post- 
pone his reply till then. He should hear the gentleman with pleasure, and 
he looked forward to it with much solicitude, and should endeavor to reply 
to him according to his best abilities. Mr, W. then entered into a lengthy 
reply to the remarks of Mr. Buchanan, in the course of which he contended 
that the law was unnecessary, because the States had at present the power 
to punish the deputy postmasters who should circulate incendiary publications 
in violation of their laws. 

Mr. Buchanan did not rise again to argue the question. He did not feel 
any petty desire to have the last word. He should now merely remark that 
the Senator from Massachusetts, in his last observations, had done nothing 
more than again to restate his proposition, without offering any new argu- 
ment in its support. He reminded him of another powerful man, in the 
ancient time, who was condemned to roll a large stone to the top of a moun- 
tain, which was always falling back upon him, and which he never could 
accomplish. The gentleman's position was one which even his great powers 
did not enable him to maintain. 

Mr. B. should not again have risen but for the purpose of making a single 
remark. The Senator from Massachusetts had just expressed the opinion 
that deputy postmasters could be punished, under State authority, for circu- 
lating inflammatory pamphlets and papers in violation of State laws. If this 
be true, then all the power over the post-office which we confer by this bill 
already exists in the States. The effect of it, then, will be nothing more than 
to express our assent to the exercise of a power over deputy postmasters by 
the States, which the gentleman admits to exist already. Upon this principle 
there can be no objection to the adoption of the present measure. 

Mr. Cuthbert only rose to repeat the request that the Senate would, by 
the postponement of the subject to a short day, allow him an opportunity of 
being heard on it when his health was better. 

Mr. 0. then moved to lay the bill on the table ; which motion was lost. 

The bill was then rejected by the following vote : 

Yeas — Messrs. Black, Brown, Buchanan, Calhoun, Cuthbert, Grundy, King 
of Alabama, King of Georgia, Mangum, Moore, Nicholas, Porter, Preston, 
Rives, Robinson, Tallmadge, Walker, White and Wright — 19. 

Nays — Messrs. Benton, Clay, Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing 
of Ohio, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Hubbard, Kent, Knight, Leigh, McKean, 
Morris, Naudain, Niles, Prentiss, Ruggles, Shepley, Southard, Swift, Tipton, 
Tomlinson, Wall, and Webster — 25. 



358 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

During tins session of Congress (1836), Michigan soiiglil 
admission into the Union. The following speech was made by 
Mr. Buchanan on the first of April, in reply to some of the 
arguments against the admission of that State : 

Mr. President : Nothing was more remote from my intention, when I 
closed my remarks on Wednesday last, than again to address you on the 
subject of the admission of Michigan into the Union ; but my argument on 
that occasion has been so strongly assailed by the Senator from New Jersey 
(Mr. Southard), and other gentlemen, that I feel myself almost constrained to 
reply. Even under this strong necessity, I would not now trespass upon 
vour time, if I believed I should thus provoke a protracted debate, and 
thereby prevent the decision of the question before we adjourn this afternoon. 

I shall undertake to demonstrate, notwithstanding all that has been said, 
that under the ordinance of 1787, aliens who were residents of the North- 
western Territory, had a clear right to exercise the elective franchise. 

The territory ceded by Virginia to the United States was sufficiently 
extensive for an immense empire. The parties to this compact of cession 
contemplated that it would form five sovereign States of this Union. At 
that early period we had just emerged from our revolutionary struggle, 
and none of the jealousy was then felt against foreigners, and particularly 
against Irish foreigners, which now appears to haunt some gentlemen. 
There had then been no attempts made to get up a native American party in 
this country. The blood of the gallant Irish had flowed freely upon every 
battle-field in defence of the liberties which we now enjoy. Besides, the 
Senate will well recollect that the ordinance was passed before the adoption 
of our present Constitution, and whilst the power of naturalization remained 
with the several States. In some, and perhaps in all of them, it required so 
short a residence, and so little trouble, to be changed from an alien to a 
citizen, that the process could be performed without the least difficulty. I 
repeat that no jealousy whatever then existed against foreigners. 

What, at that early period, was the condition of the vast Territory, part of 
which has been formed into the State of Michigan? It was a Avilderness and 
a frontier. The wise men of the old Congress who framed this ordinance 
desired to promote its population, and to render it a barrier against foreign 
invasion. They were wiUing that all persons, whether citizens of any of the 
States, or foreigners, who should establish a fixed residence in the Territory, 
and become the owners of a freehold, might not only enjoy the privilege of 
voting, but that of holding offices. In regard to the construction of the 
ordinance itself, I shall not follow in detail the argument of the Senator from 
New Jersey. Indeed, I do not consider it a question for construction. The 
language is so plain, that he who runs may read. No ingenuity can cast the 
slightest shade of doubt over it. 

The ordinance declares that " so soon as there shall be five thousand free 
male inhabitants of full age, in the district, upon giving proof thereof to the 



ADMISSION OF MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION. 359 

governor, they shall receive authority, with time and place, to elect repre- 
sentatives from their counties or townships, to represent them in the general 
assembly ; provided that, for every five hundred free male inhabitants, there 
shall be one representative, and so on, progressively, with the number of free 
male inhabitants, shall the right of representation increase, until the number 
of representatives shall amount to twenty-five ; after which the number and 
proportion of representatives shall be regulated by the legislature ; provided, 
that no person be eligible or qualified to act as a representative, unless he shall 
have been a citizen of one of the United States three years, and be a resident in 
the district, or unless he shall have resided in the district three years ; and in 
either case, shall likewise hold in his own right, in fee simple, two hundred 
acres of land within the same ; provided also, that a freehold of fifty acres of 
land in the district, having beeyi a citizen of one of the States, and being resi- 
dent in the district, or the like freehold and two years residence in the district, 
shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative^ 

Now, sir, I have said that this language is too plain for construction. "When 
had the people of this Territory the right to elect representatives? Was it 
when there were five thousand free male citizens within its borders ? By no 
means ; but as soon as there were that number of free male inhabitants, 
whether citizens or not. Who were entitled to vote at these electious? 
They, referring directly and immediately to the five thousand free male 
inhabitants of full age. 

The subsequent portion of the clause which I have just read, makes this 
question, if possible, still plainer. It divides those capable of being elected 
representatives, as well as the electors, into two distinct classes, conferring 
advantages, in both cases, upon those inhabitants who had been citizens of one 
of the States for a period of three years. If a candidate for the House of 
Representatives had been " a citizen of one of the United States three years," 
he was eligible, although he might not have been a resident of the Territory 
for more than a single day. Nothing more, in this case, is required than 
that he should be a resident. No period of residence was necessary. If the 
candidate, on the other hand, belonged to the second class — if he had been a 
naturalized citizen of one of the States for less than three years, or if he still 
continued to be an alien, in order to render him eligible as a representative, 
he must " have resided in the district three years," In short, if he had been' 
a citizen for three years, it was no matter how brief his residence might have 
been ; but if " a free male inhabitant " of any other description, a residence 
of three years was indispensable. A similar distinction prevails in regard to 
the electors. " A citizen of any of the States, if a resident of the district but 
for a single day, had a right to exercise the elective franchise. If, on the 
other hand, he were not a citizen, " two years residence in the district " was 
required. 

The property qualification was the same both for citizens and for other 
residents. 

[Mr. Buchanan here read other portions of the ordinance to prove that its 



360 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

framers were careful in their use of terms, and always distinguished with 
great precision, between the use of the words "/ree male inhabitants" and 
" citizens of one of the United States," etc. He also referred, as a further 
proof of his position, to the language of that portion of the ordinance which 
provides for the election of the legislative council.] 

Now, sir, said Mr. B., have I not clearly established the position, that, 
under this ordinance, aliens were entitled to elect and to be elected, provided 
they had resided a sufficient time in the territory, and were possessed of the 
necessary freehold qualification ? If I can comprehend the meaning of the 
plainest English words, neither doubt nor difficulty can longer rest upon this 
question. 

But it has been urged that in order to become a freeholder, a person must 
first have been a citizen of one of the States. In reply, I might content my- 
self by saying that this is begging the question. It is assuming the very 
proposition to be proved. But I shall give this objection two answers. In 
the first place, although I have become somewhat rusty in my legal knowl- 
edge, yet I feel perfectly safe in asserting, that, under the strict principles of 
the common law of England, an alien may purchase real estate, may hold real 
estate, may transmit real estate to his heirs, or devise it by his will. His 
title is good against all mankind, except the crown ; and can only be divested 
by what in technical language is termed " an office found '' in favor of the 
king. Admitting tliat the Government in this country possessed the same 
right, they have, in the most solemn terms, abandoned it, by holding out in- 
ducements, under the ordinance, to foreigners, to become the proprietors of 
real estate within the Northwestern Territory. 

An answer still more conclusive may be given to this objection. The old 
Congress which framed the ordinance had the unquestionable power to enable 
aliens to purchase and hold real estate. It was their policy to promote the 
settlement of this Territory ; and for this purpose they have plainly declared, 
by the ordinance, that aliens, or in other words, that any free male inhabitant, 
might hold real estate. Even at this day aliens, without any restriction, pur- 
chase lands from the United States. To lure them to make purchases, as we 
have done, and then to attempt to forfeit their estates, would be a violation of 
every principle of justice and public faith. 

The Congress of the United States have repeatedly, in relation to Oliio, 
Indiana, and lUinois, placed the same construction on this ordinance which I 
have done. I shall not exhaust either myself, or the Senate, by referring to 
more than one or two of these instances. In April, 1803, when Congress 
passed the act authorizing the people of Ohio to form a constitution and State 
government, it became necessary to prescribe the qualifications of the electors 
of delegates to the convention. They performed this duty in the fourth sec- 
tion of that act. It declares as follows : " That all male citizens of the United 
States who shall have arrived at full age, and resided within the said Territory 
at least one year previous to the day of election, and shall have paid a terri- 
torial or county tax, and all persons having, in, other respects, the legal qualir 



ADMISSION OP MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION. 361 

fications to vote for representatives in the general assembly of the territory, 
be, and they are hereby, authorized to choose representatives to form a con- 
vention." 

Who were these persons having, in other respects, the legal qualifications 
to vote for Territorial representatives ? Let the ordinance itself answer this 
question. They were free male persons, not citizens of the United States, 
who held a freehold in fifty acres of land within the Territory, and had resided 
: there for two years. Congress, actuated by the more liberal and enlightened 
spirit of the age, in the year 1802, dispensed with the freehold qualification in 
regard to citizens of the United States. They suflered it to remain, however, 
in relation to those persons within the Territory who were not citizens : but 
who possessed the legal qualifications, in other respects, to vote for Territorial 
representatives. 

I shall merely refer to another instance in the case of Illinois. On the 
20th May, 1812, Congress passed an act to extend the right of suffrage in 
that Territory. Under this act, no freehold was necessary, in any case, to 
the exercise of the elective franchise. The spirit of the age had corrected 
this error in politics. I am glad of it. Our own experience has taught us 
that the citizen, in humble circumstances, who pays his personal tax, feels as 
deep an interest in the welfare of the country, and would make as many sacri- 
fices to promote its prosperity and glory, as the man who has an income of 
thousands from his real estate. Wealth has never been, and never can be, a 
true standard of patriotism. By the first section of this act. Congress declared 
that " each and every free ivhite male person, who shall have attained the age 
of twenty-one years, and who shall have paid a county or Territorial tax, and 
who shall have resided one year in said Territory previous to any general 
election, and be, at the time of such election, a resident thereof, shall be 
entitled to vote for members of the legislative council and house of repre- 
sentatives for the said Territory." You perceive, sir, that Congress, by this 
act, no longer retained the distinction which they had established in regard 
to Ohio, between citizens of the United States and persons in other respects 
entitled to vote for members of the Territorial legislature. They are all 
blended together into the same mass, and the elective franchise is conferred 
upon them all, under the denomination of free white male persons, who have 
I paid taxes and resided one year in the Territory. The phrase citizens of the 
United States does not once occur in the act. In the second and third sec- 
tions these free white male persons are denominated citizens of the Territory, 
not citizens of the United States. Under the ordinance of 1787, they were, 
in fact, constituted citizens of the Territory ; and this phraseology is, there- 
fore, perfectly correct. 

The Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Southard) has undertaken the Hercu- 
lean task of proving that neither the ordinance nor the act of 1803, in relation 
to Ohio, nor the act to which I have just referred, nor the other similar acts 
conferred upon any persons not citizens of the United States the right of 
votin"-. How far he has been successful, I shall leave for the Senate to judge. 



362 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

These portions of the ordinance to which I have heretofore referred were 
subject to the control of Congress. They have been modified and changed 
in several instances, some of which have been referred to and commented 
upon in this debate. But I now come to speak of one of those articles of the 
ordinance, essential to the correct decision of this question, which is placed 
beyond the power of Congress. To use its own emphatic language, they 
" shall be considered as articles of compact between the original States and 
the people and States in the said Territory, and forever remain unalterable, 
unless by common consent." This solemn agreement has been confirmed by 
the Constitution of the United States. No person either denies or doubts 
the sacred character and the binding force of this contract. The fifth of these 
articles of this ordinance declares as follows : " And whenever any of the said 
States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be 
admitted by its delegates into the Congress of the United States, on an equal 
footing with the original States, in all respects whatever; and shall be at 
liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government; provided 
the constitution and government so to be formed shall be republican, and in 
conformity to the principles contained in these articles ; and, so far as it can 
be consistent with the general interest of the confederacy, such admission 
shall be allowed at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number 
of free inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand." 

Now, sir, under this provision, these sixty thousand free inhabitants had a 
right to frame a constitution whenever they pleased. They had a right to 
determine which of them should be electors of delegates to their own conven- 
tion for that purpose, and which of them should not. It rested solely within 
their own discretion, whether the elective franchise should be confined to 
the citizens of the United States, or be extended to other inhabitants of the 
Territory. It was the right and the duty of Congress first to determine the 
boundaries of the States to be formed within the limits of the Northwestern Ter- 
ritory. Had this duty been performed, the free inhabitants of Michigan, after 
they amounted to sixty thousand, would have become a distinct political 
community under the ordinance. They would have possessed the sovereign 
right to form a constitution ; and if the constitution were republican, and in 
conformity to the ordinance, they might have demanded admission, by their 
delegates, into the Congress of the United States. They could not have been 
refused without a direct violation of the solemnly pledged faith of the nation. 
If Congress had objected that persons, not citizens of the United States, had 
been permitted to vote at the election for delegates, they might have triumph- 
antly presented this ordinance, and declared that the question was settled by 
its terms and its spirit; that the time had arrived when they were entitled 
to shake off their Territorial dependence, and assume an equal rank with the 
other States of the Union. Throughout the ordinance there is a marked 
distinction between " free inhabitants " and " citizens of the United States." 
It is true that Congress have never yet determined the boundaries of the 
State of Alichigan ; but their omission to do so could not affect, in any degree, 



ADMISSION OF MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION. 3G3 

the right of the free male inhabitants to vote for delegates to the convention 
which framed their constitution. As soon as Michigan shall have been 
admitted into the Union, the boundaries of Wisconsin will then be irrevocably 
determined. It will be the last of the five States into which the North 
western Territory can be divided under the terms of the ordinance. When 
that Territory shall contain sixty thousand free inhabitants, they will have an 
absolute right to demand admission, as a State, into the Union, and we can- 
not refuse to admit them without violating the public faith. Still, I should 
not advise them to frame a constitution without a previous act of Congress. 

The precedent in the case of Tennessee, on which I commented when I 
addressed the Senate on Wednesday last, has completely silenced all opposi- 
tion in regard to the necessity of a previous act of Congress to enable the 
people of Michigan to form a State constitution. It now seems to be con- 
ceded, that our subsequent approbation is equivalent to our previous action. 
This can no longer be doubted. We have the unquestionable power of 
waiving any irregularities in the method of framing the constitution, had any 
such existed. It is wiser, I admit, for Congress, in the first instance, to pass 
such an act ; but, after they had refused to do so, from year to year, the 
people of Michigan had no other alternative but either to take the matter 
into their own hands, or abandon the hope of admission into the Union, 
Avitliin any reasonable time. 

But I am not done with this Tennessee precedent. 

It will be recollected that when North Carolina ceded to the United States 
the territory which now composes the State of Tennessee, it was specially 
stipulated that the inhabitants within the same should " enjoy all the privi- 
leges, benefits and advantages," set forth in the ordinance for the government 
of the Northwestern Territory. This provision makes the case of Tennessee 
one precisely in point with the present. I would ask, then, who voted at the 
election for delegates to frame the constitution of Tennessee ? Let the 
proclamation of Governor Blount, issued in obedience to an act of the Ter- 
ritorial legislature, answer this question. He declares " that all free males 
(not free male citizens,) twenty-one years of age and upwards," shall be 
entitled to vote. Under this proclamation every free male inhabitant of the 
Territory had a right to vote, no matter how short a time his inhabitancy may 
have continued. In this respect it differs from the Territorial lavr of Michi- 
gan, which requires a previous residence of three months. 

With a full knowledge of these facts. General Washington, in his message 
to Congress of the 8th of April, 1796, on the subject of the admission of 
Tennessee into the Union, declares that " among the privileges, benefits and 
advantages thus secured to the inhabitants of the Territory south of the river 
Ohio, appear to be the right of forming a permanent constitution and state 
of government, and of admission as a State by its delegates into the Congress 
of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all 
respects whatever, when it should have therein sixty thousand free inhabi- 
tants ; provided the constitution and government so to be formed should be 



304: LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

republican and in conformity to the principles contained in the articles of the 
said ordinance." 

The State of Tennessee was accordingly admitted. At this early day, 
■when the ordinance was better understood than it can be at present, no objec- 
tion was made from any quarter, so far as I can learn, that delegates to the 
convention which formed the constitution of that State, were voted for by 
inhabitants who were not citizens of the United States. Certain it is, that no 
such question was raised by General Washington. Even Mr. King, whose 
report was decidedly adverse to the admission of this State, never, in the 
most distant manner, adverts to this objection which has now been so 
strongly urged by Senators. 

I stated when I last addressed the Senate, as a proposition clearly estab- 
lished, that under the ordinance, the States formed out of the Northwestern 
Territory had a right to confer the elective franchise upon the inhabitants 
resident within them at the time of the adoption of their constitutions, 
whether they were citizens or not. I then also asserted, that the States of 
Ohio and Illinois had not only exercised this power to the extent which 
Michigan had done, but had gone much further. They had not, like Michi- 
gan, confined the elective franchise to inhabitants actually resident within their 
respective States, at the time of the adoption of their constitutions ; but had 
made a general provision by which all such inhabitants, though not citizens, 
would be entitled to vote in all future time. These positions, which I thought 
impregnable, have been violently assailed ; and it has been contended that, 
under the provisions of these constitutions, no persons, except citizens of the 
United States, are entitled to vote. This renders it necessary that I should 
again turn to these constitutions. The first section of the fourth article of the 
constitution of Ohio declares, that " in all elections, aU white male inhabitants, 
above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State one year next 
preceding the election, and who have paid, or are charged with, a State or 
county tax, shall enjoy the right of an elector ; but no person shall be enti- 
tled to vote, except in the county or district in which he shall actually reside 
at the time of the election." The fifth section of the same article varies the 
expression, and confers the right of voting "on white male persons,'' who are 
compelled to labor on the roads. These "white male inhabitants," or "white 
male persons," are not required to be citizens of the United States. The 
terms are as general as they can be. They embrace all persons, Avhether 
citizens of the United States or not, who have resided within the State for 
one year, and are in other respects qualified. Besides, it would be easy to 
show, by adverting to other parts of this constitution, that the framers of it, 
in several cases, when they intended to confine its benefits to citizens of the 
United States, have so declared in express terms. We have heard it stated 
that by a judicial decision, the right to vote has been restricted to citizens of 
the United States. This decision has not been produced. I should be very 
much pleased to see it. I am aware that judicial construction can work won- 
ders ; but if any court has decided that " all white male inhabitants," or 



ADMISSION OF MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION. 365 

" white male persons,'' are restricted in tlieir meaning to wliite male citizens 
of the United States, it is a stretch of judicial construction which surpasses 
anything of which I could have conceived. 

The constitution of Illinois is still more general in its provisions. It declares 
that " in all elections, all ivJiite male inhabitants^ above the age of twenty-one 
years, having resided in the State six months, next preceding the election, 
shall enjoy the right of an elector ; but no person shall be entitled to vote 
except in the county or district in which he shall actually reside at the time 
of the election." We have been informed by the Senators from Illinois, that 
the practice of that State has always conformed to the plain meaning of the 
constitution. At this day, any alien, who has resided within that State for 
six months, is in the full enjoyment of the elective franchise. Indeed, this 
privilege has induced aliens to settle in that State in preference to others 
where they cannot vote until after they have become citizens of the United 
States. 

Now, sir, I wish to be fairly understood upon this question. As a general 
principle, I do not tliink that any State of this Union ought to permit any 
person to exercise the right of an elector who is not either a native or a 
naturalized citizen of the United States. There may have been, and I think 
there was, a propriety in conferring the elective franchise upon the inhabitants 
of the Territory, actually resident therein, although not citizens, who had a 
ri"ht under the ordinance to participate in the formation of the constitution. 
Beyond this, the power, even under the ordinance, is extremely doubtful. 
Michigan has wisely confined herself within these limits. She has not fol- 
lowed the example of Ohio and IlUnois. These States have been admitted 
into the Union, notwithstanding the extravagant provisions in their constitu- 
tions in favor of foreigners. Would it not then be extremely ungracious to 
exclude Michigan, when no foreigner can ever hereafter enjoy the right 
of voting, except such as were resident within the limits of the State at the 
time of the formation of her constitution ? 

According to the census, it would appear that not more than from five to 
six hundred aliens could have been in that situation. At the present time it 
is probable that many of these have become naturalized citizens. The evil, if 
it be one, is very small. Within a short period it will entirely disappear. 
Would it be wise, would it be politic, would it be statesman-hke, to annul all 
that has been done by the convention of Michigan, merely for this reason ? 
Ought we, on this account, to defer the final settlement of the disputed boun- 
dary between Ohio and Michigan, and thus again give rise to anarchy and 
confusion, and perhaps to the shedding of blood ? Do you feel confident, that 
the people of Michigan, after you have violated their rights, by refusing to 
admit them into the Union at this time, would ever act under your law 
authorizing them to form a new constitution ? We must all desire to see this 
unfortunate boundary question settled ; and the passage of this bill presents 
the best, if not the only means, of accomplishing a result so desirable. 

Have the people of Michigan, or any portion of them, ever complained of 



366 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

this part of their constitution ? I would ask, by what authority have the 
Senators from Ohio and New Jersey (Messrs. Ewing and Southard) raised this 
objection, whilst the people themselves are content ? Even if they did com- 
mit an error in this respect, we ought to treat them as children, and not as 
enemies. It is the part of greatness and magnanimity to pass over unim- 
portant errors of judgment committed by those who are, in some degree, 
dependent upon us. It would, indeed, be a severe measure of justice, for the 
Congress of the United States, after having admitted Ohio and Illinois into 
the Union, to close the door of admission against Michigan. This, in truth, 
would be straiuing at a gnat, and swallowing a camel. 

Suppose you deprive the people of Michigan of a territory to v/hich they 
all believe, however erroneously, they have a right, and transfer it to Ohio, 
and then drive them from your door and refuse to admit them into the 
Union; can any Senator here view the probable consequences with com- 
posure? They are a high-spirited and manly people. You cannot blame 
them for that. They are bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. They 
have been taught, by your example, to resist what they believe to be oppres- 
sion. Will they patiently submit to your decree? Will they tamely surrender 
up to Ohio that territory of which they have been in possession for thirty 
years ? Their past history proves conclusively that they will maintain what 
they believe to be their rights, to the death. You may have civil war as the 
direct consequence of your vote this day. Should the amendment of the 
Senator from Ohio (Mr, Ewing) prevail, whilst it will leave unsettled the 
question of boundary so important to his own State, it may, and probably 
will produce, scenes of bloodshed and civil war along the boundary line. I 
have expressed the opinion, that Congress possess the power of annexing the 
territory in dispute to the State of Ohio, and that it is expedient to exercise it. 
The only mode of extorting a reluctant consent from the people of Michigan 
to this disposition, is to make it a condition of their admission, under their 
present constitution, into the Union, The bill proposes to do so, and, in my 
humble judgment, Ohio is deeply interested in its passage. 

I shall now, following the example of my friend from New York (Mr. 
Wright), proceed to make some suggestions upon another point. They are 
intended merely as suggestions, for I can say with truth I have formed no 
decided opinion upon the subject. A friend called to see me last evening, and 
attempted to maintain the proposition that the several States, under the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and independent of the ordinance applicable to 
the Northwestern Territory, had the power of conferring the right to vote 
upon foreigners resident within their territories. This opinion was at war 
with all my former impressions. He requested me to do as he had done, and 
to read over the Constitution of the United States carefully, with a view to 
this question. I have complied with his request, and shall now throw out a 
few suggestions upon this subject, merely to elicit the opinion of others. 

The older I grow, the more I am inclined to be what is called "a State 
rights man." The peace and security of this Union depend upon giving to 



ADMISSION OF MICHIGAN INTO THE UNION. 3G7 

the Constitution <i literal and fair construction, such as -would be placed upon 
it by a plain, intelligent man, and not by ingenious constructions, to increase 
the powers of this Government, and thereby diminish those of the States. 
The rio-hts of the States, reserved to them by that instrument, ought ever to 
be held sacred. If then the Constitution leaves to them to decide according 
to their own discretion, unrestricted and unlimited, who shall be electors, it 
follows as a necessary consequence that they maj'-, if they think proper, con- 
fer upon resident aliens the right of voting. 

It has been supposed, and is perhaps generally believed, that this power 
has been abridged by that clause in the Constitution which declares, that " the 
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of 
citizens of the several States." Does then a State, by conferring upon a 
person, not a citizen of the United States, the privilege of voting, necessarily 
constitute him a citizen of such State ? Is the elective franchise so essentially 
connected with the citizenship, that the one cannot exist without the other? 
This is the question. If it be so, no State can exercise this power ; because, 
no State, by bestowing upon an alien the privilege of voting, can make him a 
citizen of that State, and thereby confer upon him " the privileges and 
immunities of citizens of the several States." Citizens are either natives of 
the country, or they are naturalized. To Congress exclusively belongs the 
power of naturalization ; and I freely admit, that no foreigner can become a 
citizen of the United States, but by complying with the provisions of the acts 
of Congress upon this subject. But still we are brought back to the question, 
may not a State bestow upon a resident alien the right to vote, within its 
limits, as a personal privilege, without conferring upon him the other privileges 
of citizenship, or ever intending to render it obligatory upon the other States 
to receive him as a citizen? Might not Virginia refuse to a foreigner who 
had voted in Illinois, without having been naturalized, " the privileges and 
immunities " of one of her citizens, without any violation of the Constitution 
of the United States ? Would such an alien have any pretext for claiming, 
under the Constitution of the United States, the right to vote within a State 
where citizens of the United States alone are voters? 

It is certain that the Constitution of the United States, in the broadest 
terms, leaves to the States the qualifications of their own electors, or rather it 
does not restrict them in any manner upon this question. The second section 
of the first article provides " that the House of Representatives shall be com- 
posed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several 
States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for 
electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." By the first 
section of the second article, " each State shall appoint, in such manner as the 
Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number 
of Senators and Representatives to which the State maybe entitled in the Con- 
gress." Both these provisions seem to recognize in the States the most absolute 
discretion in deciding who shall be qualified electors. There is no declaration or 
intimation throughout the Avhole instrument that these electors shall be citizens 



3GS LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

of the United States. Are the States not left to exercise this discretion in 
tlie same sovereign manner tliey did before they became parties to the 
Federal Constitution? There is at least strong plausibility in the argument, 
especially when we consider that tlie framers of the Constitution in order 
more effectually to guard the reserved rights of the States, inserted a provi- 
sion, " that tlie powei-s not delegated to the United States by the Constitu- 
tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
or to the people." 

Without any stretch of imagination, we might conceive a case in which 
this question would shake our Union to the very centre. Suppose that the 
decision of the next Presidential election should depend upon the vote of 
Illinois ; and it could be made to appear, that the aliens who voted under the 
Constitution in that State, had turned the scale in favor of tlie successful 
candidate. What would then be the consequence? Have we a right to 
rejudge her justice ? to interfere with her sovereign rights ? to declare that 
her Legislature could not appoint electors of President and Vice President in 
such manner as they thought proper, and to annul the election ? 

It is curious to remark, that except in a few instances, the Constitution of 
the United States has not prescribed that the officers elected or appointed 
under its authority, shall be citizens ; and we all know in practice, tliat tlie 
Senate have been constantly in the habit of confirming the nominations of 
foreigners as consuls of the United States. The}^ have repeatedly done so, I 
believe, in regard to other officers. 

I repeat that, on this question, I have formed no fixed opinion one way or 
the other. On the other points of the case, I entertain the clearest convic- 
tion, that Michigan is entitled to admission into the Union. 

I have thus completed all I intend to say upon this subject. I have been 
most reluctantly drawn a second time into this debate. I had the admission 
of Arkansas specially entrusted to my care. Few, if any, of the objections 
urged against ^Michigan, are applicable to Arkansas ; but I could not conceal 
from myself the fact, that the admission of the one depended upon that of 
the other; and I am equally anxious to receive both the sisters. 

The people of Texas Averc at tliis time engaged in their 
revolutionary effort to make themselves independent of Mexico. 
It was deemed necessary to authorize the President of the 
Uuited States to accept the services of volunteers for the 
defence of the frontiers. On a bill introduced for this i>urpose, 
and which had passed the House of Representatives, Mr. 
Buchanan, on the -ith of May, said : 

He had no doubt but that the Government of the United States, in regard 
to Mexico, had pursued, and would pursue, the course which had been 
sanctioned by all its experience in relation to questions of this kind. One 
principle had been established in the political history of the country ; had 



AFFAIRS OF TEXAS. 309 

grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength; and without 
knowing what the President had done or would do in this matter, he had no 
doubt but he would strictly adhere to that established principle in our institu- 
tions, never to interfere with the internal poUcy or domestic concerns of for- 
eign nations. The famous proclamation of neutrality of General Washington 
first asserted that principle, and to it our Government had always adhered. 
We consider, said Mr. B., all nations " enemies in war, and in peace, 
friends." 

In regard to Mexico, he considered Santa Anna as an usurper. The fed- 
eral constitution, established for the Republic of Mexico, and which Texas, as 
a part of that Republic, had sworn to support, had been trampled on by him, 
and Texas, in his eyes, and in the eyes of all mankind, was justified in rebel- 
ling against him. Whether the Texans acted consistently with a true policy 
at the time, in declaring their independence, he should not discuss, nor should 
he decide; but as a man and an American, he should be rejoiced to see 
them successful in maintaining their liberties, and he trusted in God they 
would be so. He would, however, leave them to rely on their own bravery, 
with every hope and prayer that the God of battles would shield them with 
his protection. 

If Santa Anna excited the Indians within our territory to deeds of massa- 
cre and blood ; if he should excite a spirit among them which he cannot 
restrain ; and if, in consequence, the blood of our women and children on the 
frontier shall flow, he undoubtedly ought to be held responsible. Mr. B. saw 
a strong necessity for sending a force to the frontiers, not only to restrain the 
natural disposition of the Indians to deeds of violence, but because they 
could place no confidence in a man who had so little command of his tem- 
per, who had shown so cruel and sanguinary a disposition as Santa Anna had. 
He was for having a force speedily sent to that frontier, and a force of 
mounted men or dragoons, as suggested by the Senator from Missouri (Mr. 
Linn), but he was against interfering in the war now raging in Texas, unless 
an attack should be made on us. 

If it were left for him to decide to which bill a preference should be given 
by the Senate, he would first take up the bill providing for this additional 
force for the protection of the frontiers; but he had been instructed by an 
authority which he was bound to respect and obey, and he must, therefore, 
vote to take up the land bill. lie should vote with the warmest friends of 
that bill in its favor till it was either carried through or defeated. To-day or 
to-morrow, the land bill would be finally disposed of; it now stood in the way 
of everything else ; and he would then be for proceeding with the appropri- 
ation bills as rapidly as possible. He should have said nothing about instruc- 
tions, had not this question of preference been brought up. After the decision 
of the land bill, he should give his hearty support to carry through the bills 
necessary for the defence of the country, with as much expedition as 
possible. 

I— 24 



370 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

In Senate, Monday, May 9, 1836. 

Mr. Preston presented the petition of a number of the citizens of Philadel- 
phia, on the subject of the affairs of Texas ; and praying Congress to acknowl- 
edge the independence of that country. 

Mr. Buchanan said he had received several memorials from the city of 
Philadelphia, of the same character as those which had been presented by the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Preston). He had intended to present 
them this morning to the Senate, but was prevented from doing so at the 
proper time by an accidental circumstance. It was also his intention to have 
accompanied their presentation by some remarks. These he thought best to 
offer now, rather than to wait until to-morrow morning, and then become 
instrumental in getting up another debate. 

These memorials asked Congress " to recognize the independence of Texas, 
and at such time, and in such manner, as may be deemed proper, interpose 
to terminate the conflict which now rages in that country." 

In some remarks, which he had submitted to the Senate a few days since, 
and which, like all other proceedings in this body, had been much misrepre- 
sented abroad, he had indulged the feelings of a man and an American citi- 
zen. What he then uttered were the sentiments of his own heart, in relation 
to the existing trouble in Texas. But when he was called on as a Senator to 
recognize the independence of that country, he thought it prudent to refer 
back to the conduct of our ancestors, when placed in similar circumstances, 
and to derive lessons of wisdom from their example. If there was any 
one principle of our pubhc policy which had been well settled — one which 
had been acted upon by every administration, and Avhich had met the 
approbation not only of this country, but of every civilized government with 
which we have intercourse, it was that we should never interfere in the 
domestic concerns of other nations. Kecognizmg in the people of every 
nation the absolute right to adopt such forms of government as they thought 
proper, we had always preserved the strictest neutrality between the parties, 
in every country, whilst engaged in civil war. We had left all nations per- 
fectly free, so far as we were concerned, to establish, to maintain, or to change 
their forms of government, according to their own sovereign will and pleasure. 
It would indeed be surprising, and more than that, it would be unnatural, if 
the sympathies of the American people should not be deeply, earnestly en- 
listed in favor of those who drew the sword for liberty throughout the world, 
no matter where it was raised to strike. Beyond this we had never pro- 
ceeded. 

The peaceful influence of our example upon other nations was much 
greater — the cause of free government was thus more efficiently promoted 
than if we should waste the blood and treasure of the people of the United 
States in foreign wars, waged even to maintain the sacred cause of liberty. 
The world must be persuaded, it could not be conquered. Besides, said Mr. 
B., we can never, with any proper regard for the welfare of our constituents, 



AFFAIRS OF TEXAS. 37I 

devote their energies and their resources to the cause of planting and sus- 
taining free institutions among the people of other nations. 

Acting upon these principles, we had always recognized existing govern- 
ments de facto, whether they were constitutional or despotic. We had the 
same amicable relations with despotisms as with free governments ; because 
we had no right to quarrel with people of any nation on account of the form 
of government which they might think proper to adopt or to sanction. It was 
their affair, not ours. We would not tolerate such interference from abroad ; 
and Ave ought to demean ourselves towards foreign nations as we should 
require them to act towards oui'selves. 

A very striking illustration of this principle had been presented, during 
the present administration, in the case of Portugal. We recognized Don 
Miguel's government, because he was de facto in possession of the throne, 
apparently with the consent of the Portuguese people. In this respect, Mr. B. 
believed, we stood alone, or nearly alone, among the nations of the earth. 
When he was expelled from that country, and the present queen seemed to 
be firmly seated upon the throne, we had no difficulty, pursuing our estab- 
lished policy, in recognizing her government. 

A still more striking case, and one to the very point in question, had 
occurred during Mr. Monroe's administration. The Spanish provinces; 
throughout the whole continent of America, had raised the standard of 
rebellion against the king of Spain. They were struggling for liberty against 
oppression. The feelings of the American people were devotedly enlisted in 
their favor. Our ardent wishes and our prayers for their success, continued 
throughout the whole long and bloody conflict. But we took no other part 
in their cause ; and we rendered them no assistance, except the strong moral 
influence exerted over the world by our well-known feelings and opinions in 
their favor. When, said Mr. B., did we recognize their independence? Not 
till after they had achieved it by their arms ; not until the contest was over, 
and victory had perched upon their banners ; not until the good fight had 
been fought and won. We then led the van in acknowledging their indepen- 
dence. But until they were independent in fact, we resisted every effisrt 
and every eloquent appeal which was made in their behalf, to induce us to 
depart from the settled policy of the country. When the fact of their actual 
independence was established; then, and not till then, did we acknowledge it. 

He would rejoice should similar success attend the arms of the Texans. 
He trusted they would yet conquer their independence against the myrmi- 
dons of Santa Anna. In that event, there was no man in the country who 
would vote more cheerfully to recognize it than himself. Until that time 
should arrive, he must continue to act upon the firmly established principle 
which had been our guide for nearly half a century. 

Mr. B. believed that no President of the United States had ever been 
more strongly convinced of the necessity of maintaining this principle invio^ 
late than General Jackson. His whole conduct towards foreign governments 
had made this manifest. Whilst, said Mr. B., he requires justice from all, he 



372 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

treats all with justice. In bis annual message, at the commencement of the 
present session, he informed Congress that instructions had been given to the 
district attorneys of the United States, to prosecute all persons who might 
attempt to violate our neutrality in the civil war between Mexico and Texas. 
He also stated that he had apprised the government of Mexico that we should 
require the integrity of our territory to be scrupulously respected by both 
parties. He thus declared to the world, not only that we had determined to 
be neutral between the parties, but that our neutrality must be respected by 
both. This afforded abundant evidence of his disposition neither to interfere 
with the internal concerns of other nations, nor to submit to any violation of 
the law of nations by them. Mr. B. entertained not a doubt that the line of 
conduct which he had marked out for himself, in the beginning, he Avould 
pursue until the end, so far as the executive Government was concerned. 

It was obviously necessary to concentrate a strong military force on the 
confines of Texas, not only to enforce our neutrality, but to protect the lives 
and property of our fellow-citizens. This had been done ; but the command- 
ing general had been strictly prohibited from acting, except on the defensive. 

Such a force was absolutely necessary to preserve inviolate our treaty with 
Mexico. Under it, vre were bound to maintain peace among the Indian 
nations along the frontier of the two countries, and to restrain the Indians 
within our territory by force, if that should become necessary, from making 
war upon Mexico. Tliis obligation was reciprocal and bound both parties. 
If the Indians from Texas should be let slip upon our frontier ; if they, or 
Santa Anna, or any other power should attempt to invade our territory, then 
every American would say, repel force by force, and return blow for blow. 
Our cause and our quarrel would be just. 

But, said Mr. B., let us not, by departing from our settled policy, give rise 
to the suspicion that we have got up tliis war for the purpose of wresting 
Texas from those to whom, under the faith of treaties, it justly belongs. 
Since the treaty with Spain of 1819, there could no longer be any doubt, 
but that this province was a part of Mexico. He was sorry for it ; but such 
was the undeniable fact. Let us then follow the course which we had pur- 
sued, under similar circumstances, in all other cases. 

Mr. B. said his blood boiled whilst contemplating the cruelties and the 
barbarities which were said to have been committed by the Mexicans in this 
contest. The heart sickened and revolted at such a spectacle. But, as an 
American Senator, he could give the Texans nothing except his prayers and 
his good wishes. 

In Senate, Friday, AIay 20, 1836. 

Mr. Calhoun, from the Committee of Conference appointed on the part of 
the Senate, to confer with a committee of the House on the disagreeing votes 
of the two Houses as to the Senate's amendment to the bill authorizing the 
President to accept the services of ten thousand volunteers for the defence 
of the western frontiers, reported that the committees of the two Houses had 



AFFAIRS OF TEXAS. 373 

had a meeting, but that they had not been able to effect the objects for which 
they were appointed, having sat the whole day without coming to any agree- 
ment whatever. 

Mr. King of Alabama (from the same committee) observed that it was 
true that they had come to no agreement on the point at issue between the 
two Houses, inasmuch as some gentlemen seemed to think that they had the 
whole bill under consideration, and that they had the power to modify it at 
pleasure. He hoped that when the Senate again appointed a committee of 
conference, they would appoint gentlemen who Avould be willing to confine 
their deUberations to the subject of disagreement, and not think themselves 
authorized to take the range of the whole bill. 

Mr. Calhoun rephed that the committee did confine themselves to the 
subject of disagreement, until finding that there was no possibility of coming 
to an agreement on that point, they entered into a more enlarged discussion, 
for the purpose of ascertaining whether the bill could not be so framed as to 
meet the concurrence of both Houses. His understanding was, that when a 
committee of conference came to a proposition that could not be agreed on, 
the whole subject was open to them. 

Mr. King recollected exactly the state of the case. The proposition 
last made was, that they should extend the term of service of the militia 
force of the United States for a year, instead of its being a volunteer militia 
force. This was the last subject of conference; and after talking until 
half-past five o'clock, the committee found that they could come to no 
agreement whatever. 

Mr. Buchanan said that he had been a member of the Committee of Con- 
ference ; and if a second committee should now be appointed, he hoped he 
would be excused from serving upon it. He did not believe that the 
appointment of the same committee by the Senate and the House could result 
in any practical good. They had been busily engaged in the Conference 
Chamber until a late hour yesterday, and when they had separated, they 
were further, if possible, from agreeing, than when they had first met. 

For his own part, he could not feel the force of the constitutional objections 
Avhich had been made by the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun). It 
was true that the amendment which had been proposed by the Senate to the 
bill of the House was somewhat vague and ambiguous in its terms. He had 
thought, at one time, during the conference, that we should have agreed upon an 
amendment to the Senate's amendment, which would have made the bill 
much more explicit, and would have removed all the constitutional objections 
of the gentlemen. When it came to the final vote, he found that he had been 
mistaken. 

The amendment proposed in the Committee of Conference provided that 
none of the officers should be appointed by the President, until the volunteers 
were actually mustered into the service of the United States. Until that 
moment, the companies which might be formed would thus be considered as 
mere voluntary associations, under no pledge whatever, except that of honor, 



374 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

to enter the service of their country. When once, however, this pledge was 
redeemed — when they were mustered into the service — they became a portion 
of the army of the United States for the period of six or twelve months; 
and then there could not possibly be a constitutional objection to the appoint- 
ment of their officers by the President. Congress possessed the power to 
raise armies in any manner they thought proper. Whether they obtained 
soldiers by individual enlistments, or whether the patriotic young men of the 
country chose to associate together as volunteers, and come in masses, we 
had an equal right to receive them. The one mode of obtaining soldiers was 
just as constitutional as the other. 

The amendment which had been proposed, whilst it practically insured to 
the companies the selection of their own company officers, did not interfere 
with the constitutional powers of the President. The volunteers themselves 
Avere to designate such officers, and if the President approved of such desig- 
nations, these officers would be appointed. This would be the best and 
strongest recommendation which could be presented to him ; and, no doubt, 
he would always obey the wishes of the companies, unless in cases where 
powerful and satisfactory reasons existed to render it improper. 

Until these volunteers should actually enter the service, they would con- 
tinue to be militia men of the States, and liable to perform militia duty in 
the States. Their character would not be changed. They would not con- 
stitute a dormant standing army in the States, with officers appointed by the 
President, as had been urged, but would be mere associations, bound together 
by no law but that of honor. Such men would always be ready to obey the 
call of their country in case of necessity. 

The Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) did argue that it would 
be a violation of the Constitution for the President to appoint these officers 
without the previous advice and consent of the Senate. Whatever doubt 
might have rested upon this point at the organization of our Government, 
this power had been exercised, over and over again, ever since the adoption 
of the Constitution, under all administrations. The precedents were numer- 
ous. One act had been read which passed during the late war, conferring 
upon the President, in express terms, the power of appointing all the officers 
of the military force to be raised under its provisions, but requiring him to 
submit these appointments to the Senate for their approbation at the next 
session. The very same thing was proposed to be done by this act, in regard 
to all the officers above the rank of captain. 

He was afraid to trust his memory in attempting to state the proceedings 
of the Committee of Conference. So much had been said, that he could not, 
if he would, undertake to report it all. We did not confine ourselves to the 
point of disagreement between the two Houses ; but almost every question 
relating to the military defence of the country had been ably and eloquently 
discussed. He bad derived much information on this subject from the 
members of that committee. 

There was one fact which he would mention, and Avhich demanded the 



AFFAIRS OF TEXAS, 375 

serious consideration of the country at the present crisis. A gallant and dis- 
tinguished officer, who was a member of the committee, (G-en. Ripley) had 
stated, that, according to his recollection, the history of our Indian wars did 
not present a single case in which a volunteer force had been beaten by the 
Indians. Our disasters in this kind of warfare had always been suffered by the 
regular troops. Our recent experience was certainly in accordance with this 
statement. This important fact, however, established the necessity of raising 
volunteer corps, in some form or other, composed of the brave and hardy 
youth, accustomed to the modes of Indian warfare, and who were able and 
willin"' to fight the Indians, man to man, according to their own custom. 
Such men would best protect our citizens from the ravages of the Indians, 
and would soon put an end to the Creek war. 

He had said more than he intended, as his chief object in rising had been 
to request that he might not be appointed a member of the new Committee 
of Conference. 

Mr. Buchanan could not now but hope, after having heard the observations 
of the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun), that a Committee of Con- 
ference might yet agree upon some compromise which would be acceptable to 
both Houses. He now believed, from what he had just heard from several 
members of the other House, that another committee ought to be appointed. 

The Senator from South Carolina had not, he believed, denied any of the 
positions which he had stated. They did not materially differ as to their con- 
stitutional views on this subject. His (Mr. B.'s) positions were these : that 
any number of individuals within the States might associate together, either 
in companies, battalions, or divisions, for the purpose of entering the army of 
the United States, for six or for twelve months, upon any contingency which 
mi"-ht render their services necessary; that these associations would be volun- 
tary and not compulsory ; and would be held together by no tie but that sense 
of honor which binds a man to enter the service of his country, after he has 
declared, in the presence of the world, that such was his determination; and 
that these volunteers, after having arrived at the place of rendezvous, and after 
having been mustered into service, but not before, became a part of the 
regular army of the United States ; and the President could then, by and 
with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint their officers. At one 
period of the conference, he had believed that the committee would arrive at 
these conclusions. 

One of the objections of the Senator from South Carolina was, that the 
appointment of the captains of companies and other inferior officers ought, 
like that of the superior officers, to be submitted to the Senate. Mr. B. had 
been perfectly willing and was still willing to adopt this modification. He 
could not, however, agree, nor did he understand the gentleman now to insist 
upon it, that these offices could not be filled without the previous advice of 
the Senate. Such a provision would render the law perfectly nugatory. We 
might not, and probably would not, be in session when these appointments 
must be made. The same necessity which the gentleman alleges to have 



376 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

existed during the late war, for authorizing the President to make appoint- 
ments, during the recess of the Senate, will exist in regard to the appoint- 
ments to be made under this act. — Besides, whatever might be our opinion in 
regard to the power of the President, if the question were now, for the first 
time, submitted to us. Congress have so often authorized him to make appoint- 
ments, during the recess, to be submitted to the Senate at its next session, 
that this constitutional question must be considered as settled. 

As to the act of 1813, which bad just been cited by the other Senator from 
South Carolina (Mr. Preston), he thought it went too far. He would not say- 
that it was unconstitutional, because he had not examined the subject suffi- 
ciently to express a positive opinion. This he would say, however, that it did 
authorize the existence of a dormant military force Avithin the several States, 
commanded by officers appointed by the President of the United States, and 
liable to be called into service at any moment he might think proper. The 
individuals composing this force were exempted from militia duty within the 
States. Upon the principles contained in this act, the militia of the several 
States might be subverted, and a national militia, under the command of 
national officers, might be substituted in its stead. This would certainly be at 
war with the spirit of the Constitution, which reserves to the States respect- 
ively the appointment of the officers of the militia, and the authority of train- 
ing them according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. The militia 
emphatically belongs to the States, and not to the General Government; and 
it might be very dangerous for the States to surrender their control over this 
force into the hands of Congress. 

Under the act cited by the gentleman, a portion of the militia was taken 
from the control of the States, and relieved from the performance of militia 
duty, v/hilst they remained in the heart of the country, mixed up with the 
other citizens. This did seem to him to interfere with the power of the 
States over their militia, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution. But 
these objections did not apply to the bill before them, nor to the amendment 
he had suggested. They had drawn a broad line of separation between the 
force to be raised and the militia of the States. What they proposed was, 
that these volunteers should associate themselves together for the purpose of 
offering their services to their country, and that when they arrived at their 
places of rendezvous, they should enrol themselves, and be mustered into 
service as a part of the regular army ; but until then, that they should remain 
as they were, citizens of the several States, liable to the performance of the 
militia duty of the States. With these views, he was confident that a new 
Committee of Conference might come to such an agreement as would be accept- 
able to both Houses, and he therefore hoped that one would be appointed. 
He was almost ashamed to say that he had never acquainted himself suffi- 
ciently with the rules which governed the proceedings of a Committee of 
Conference. His common sense, however, had taught him that it was the 
duty of such a committee to confine itself to the point of disagreement 
between the two Houses ; but he had been informed by gentlemen of great 



AFFAIRS OF TEXAS. 377 

experience that the whole subject of the bill was open to them. Acting upon 
this principle, they had got into a general discussion as to the relative value of 
volunteer and regular as well as common militia forces. He believed now that 
a Committee of Conference might do some good, and that by steering clear of 
the constitutional scruples of gentlemen, they might agree on some amend- 
ments that would render the bill acceptable to both Houses, and thus enable 
them speedily to adopt a measure so urgently demanded for the protection of 
the suffering inhabitants of the frontiers. 

Mr. B. said, as he should not be a member of the new Committee of Con- 
ference, he would read the amendment which had been so much discussed in 
the old committee : 

" Be it enacted, That the said volunteers shall form themselves into com- 
panies, and designate their company officers, who, if he approve of such 
designations, shall be commissioned by the President, after they shall have 
been mustered into service ; and that the President be, and hereby is, author- 
ized to organize the volunteers so mustered into service, as aforesaid, into 
battalions, squadrons, regiments, brigades and divisions, as soon as the number 
of volunteers shall render such organization, in his judgment, expedient, and 
shall then appoint the necessary officers, which appointment shall be sub- 
mitted to the Senate at its next session." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

1837— 1840. 

BILL TO PREVENT THE INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS WITH 
ELECTIONS — DEVOTION OP THE FOLLOWERS OP JACKSON — THE WHIG 
PARTY LESS COMPACT IN CONSEQUENCE OP THE RIVALRY BETWEEN 
MR. CLAY AND MR. WEBSTER — RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OP THE 
BANK QUESTION — THE SPECIE CIRCULAR — GREAT FINANCIAL DISAS- 
TERS. 

TOWAED the close of General Jackson's administration a 
bill was pending in the Senate to prevent tlie interference 
of certain federal officers with elections ; a subject which has 
not yet lost its interest. On this bill, on the 14th of February, 
1839, Mr. Buchanan made the following speech : 

Mr. President : The question raised for discussion by the bill now before 
the Senate, is very simple in its character. This bill proposes to punish, by a 
fine of five hundred dollars — the one moiety payable to the informer, and the 
Other to the United States — and by a perpetual disability to hold ofiice under 
the United States, any officer of this Government, below the rank of a dis- 
trict attorney, who "shall, by word, message, or writing, or in any other 
manner whatsoever, endeavor to persuade any elector to give, or dissuade 
any elector from giving, his vote for the choice of any person to be elector of 
President and Vice President of the United States," or to be a Senator or 
Representative in Congress, or to be a governor or lieutenant-governor, or 
senator or representative, within any State of the Union, " or for the choice 
of any person to serve in any public office established by the law of any 
of the States." The officers of the United States against whom the penalties 
of this bill are denounced, consist of marshals and their deputies, postmasters 
and their deputies, receivers and registers of land offices, and their deputies 
and clerks ; surveyors general of the public lands, and their deputies and 
assistants ; collectors, surveyors, naval officers, weighers, gaugers, appraisers, 
or other officers or persons concerned or employed in the charging, collecting, 
levying or managing the customs, or any branch thereof; and engineers, 
officers, or agents, employed or concerned in the execution or superintendence 
of any of the public works. 

The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden), before he commenced his 
remarks, moved to amend the bill by striking fiom it the pecuniary penalty 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 379 

and perpetual disability against these officers, and substituting, in their stead, 
the penalty of a removal from office by the President, upon the production 
of evidence satisfactory to him that any of them had been guilty of the 
offence. 

Now, for myself (said Mr. B.), I shall not vote for this amendment. I 
will not take advantage of the amiable weakness of my friend from Ken- 
tucky, in yielding to the solicitation of others that which his own judgment 
approved. I will more especially not give such a vote, because the proposed 
amendment makes no change in the principle of the bill. There is a beautiful 
harmony and consistency in its provisions as it came fresh from its author 
which ought to be preserved. I shall not assist in marring any of its fair 
proportions. Let it remain in its perfect original form, and let its friends 
upon this floor come up to the baptismal font, and act as its sponsors; and let 
its avowed principles be recognized as the established doctrines of the political 
church to which they are all devoted. No, sir, no ; if a village postmaster 
should dare to exercise the freedom of speech, guarantied to him by an anti- 
quated instrument, called the Constitution of the United States, and have the 
audacity " to endeavor to persuade any elector " to vote for Martin Van 
Buren, or what would be a much more aggravated offence, dissuade any good 
Whig from voting for the other distinguished Senator from Kentucky, (Mr. 
Clay), a mere forfeiture of his office would bear no just proportion to the 
enormity of the crime. Let such a daring criminal be fined five hundred 
dollars; let him be disqualified forever from holding any office under the 
Government; and let him be pointed at as a man of blasted reputation all 
the days of his life. With honest Dogberry, in the play of " Much ado 
about Nothing," I pronounce the offisnce to be " flat burglary as ever was 
committed." 

There is another reason why I shall vote against the amendment. An 
issue has been fairly made between the Senator from Kentucky and my friend 
from New Jersey, (Mr. Wall), who, from what we have heard in the course 
of this debate, has but a few shattered planks lefl on which he can escape 
from a total shipwreck of his fair fame. In mercy to him I would not remove 
any of them. Let him have a chance for his life. He has dared to make a 
report against the bill in its original form, as it was referred to the committee 
of which he is the chairman; and for this cause has encountered all the 
withering denunciations of the Senators from Kentucky and Virginia, (Messrs, 
Crittenden and Rives). In justice to him, the aspect of the question should 
not now be changed. Let us, then, have the bill, the whole bill, and nothing 
but the bill, against which his report was directed. 

It would seem almost unnecessary to discuss the question whether this bill 
be constitutional or not; as the Senator from Kentucky, throughout the 
whole course of his argument, never once attempted to point to any clause 
of the Constitution on which it could be supported. It is true that he did 
cite some precedents in our legislation, which he supposes have a bearing on 
the subject ; but which, I shall undertake to prove, hereafter, are wholly inap- 



380 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

plicable. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Rives) has gone further into the 
argument, and has attempted to prove that this bill is constitutional. At the 
proper time, I shall endeavor to furnish the proper answer to bis remarks. 
By-the-by, this Constitution is a terrible bugbear. Whilst a member of the 
other House, I once heard an old gentleman exclaim, vyhen it was cited 
against one of his favorite measures, " what a vast deal of good it prevents 
us from doing! " After this bill shall have passed, it will be a bugbear no 
longer, so far as the freedom of speech or the press is concerned. It will not 
then alarm even political children. 

The gentlemen have a precedent for their bill. Yes, sir, they have a pre- 
cedent in the sedition law ; but it does not go far enough for their purpose. 
That law, which is the only true precedent on which this bill can be founded, 
and on which alone it can be sustained, permitted every man to write and to 
publish what he pleased concerning public men and public measures, and 
only held him responsible in case his charges should prove to be false. But 
this bill is a gag law. It goes to the fountain at once, and prohibits the officer 
not only from writing, but from speaking anything good, bad, or indifferent, 
whether true or false, on any subject whatever which may affect any pending 
election from that of a President down to a constable. It has a much broader 
sweep than the sedition law, which did not interfere with the liberty of 
speech, however much it may have abridged the freedom of the press. 
Indeed, among the more enlightened despotisms of Europe, I know not one 
which prohibits the freedom of speech on all public subjects; it is only in free 
and enlightened America that we propose actually to insert the gag. The 
sedition law was bad enough, God knows ; but it extended only to the use 
of the pen, not to that of the tongue. There is, therefore, no parallel 
between the two cases. 

Had it not been for the existence of the sedition law, I should have sup- 
posed it to be impossible that there could have been two opinions in regard to 
the utter unconstitutionality of this bill. The Constitution, in language so 
plain as to leave no room for misconstruction, declares that '■ Congress shall 
make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." The rule is 
universal. There is no exception. This bill proposes not only to abridge, but 
utterly to destroy the freedom of speech, and of the press ; to interdict their 
use altogether to the enumerated officers, on all questions touching the elec- 
tion of any officer of the Federal or State Government. A plain man would 
naturally suppose that, barely to state the contradiction between the Consti- 
tution and this bill was to decide the question. Not so. An ingenious and 
astute lawyer, in favor of a liberal construction of that instrument, can, by 
inference and ingenuity, confer powers upon Congress in direct violation 
both of its letter and its spirit, and of which its framers never once dreamed. 
Such was the power to pass the sedition law. That law engrafted one limi- 
tation upon the freedom of the press. It, in effisct, changed the meaning of 
the general terms " Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of 
speech or of the press," and excepted from their operation any law which 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 381 

might be passed to punish libels against the President, the Government, or 
either House of Congress. The present bill, in principle at least, proceeds 
much further. It excepts from the general prohibition of the Constitution 
the power of punishing all persons holding offices under the Government of 
the United States who shall dare either to speak or to write at all on ques- 
tions which may affect the result of any election. This interpolation must be 
inserted, before gentlemen can show any power to pass the present bill. They 
cannot advance one step in their argument without it. This Constitution can 
never be construed according to the meaning of its framers but by men of 
plain, well-informed, and practical judgment. Common sense is its best 
expounder. Ingenious men, disposed to raise one implication upon another 
in favor of Federal power, and to make each previous precedent the founda- 
tion on which to proceed another step in the march toward consolidation, 
may soon make it mean anything or nothing. The liberties of this country 
can only be preserved by a strict construction of the enumerated powers 
granted by the States to Congress. 

Before I proceed further in my argument against the constitutionality of 
this bill, it will be proper that I should develop some of its latent beauties. I 
desire to delineate a little more precisely its character — to present some of its 
striking features, and to show what it is in principle, and what it will prove 
to be in practice. 

There are twenty-six sovereign States in this Confederacy, united by a 
Federal compact, called the Constitution of the United States. Each indi- 
vidual elector in this country sustains two distinct characters. He is a citizen 
of some one of the States, and he is also a citizen of the United States. Now, 
what does this bill propose ? In the older States of this Confederacy, all the 
Federal officers which we have in the interior are postmasters. It is true 
that at our ports of entry there are custom-house officers ; but in Pennsyl- 
vania, for example, from the Schuylkill to the Ohio and to Lake Erie, our 
people scarcely feel their connection with the General Government except 
through the medium of the Post Office Department. These postmasters are 
very numerous. They are planted in every village and at every cross road. 
They are agents for disseminating information throughout the country. I 
might probably say that in nine instances out of ten the office is scarcely 
worth holding on account of its pecuniary emoluments. In most cases, the 
postmaster accepts it for the accommodation of his neighbors. 

Now this postmaster is generally a man of property and of character, 
having a deep stake in the community and in the faithful administration and 
execution of the laws. Two candidates are presented to the people for office ; 
say that of a justice of the peace. If one of these village postmasters should, 
in the exercise of his unquestionable rights as a citizen of Pennsylvania, advise 
his neighbor to vote for one of these candidates, and against the other, this 
bill dooms him to a fine of five hundred dollars, and to a perpetual disqualifi- 
cation from ever holding any office under the Government of the United 
States. No matter whether the merits which he may have ascribed to one 



382 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

of the candidates be true as holy writ, and the delinquencies which he may 
have charged against the other may be susceptible of the clearest proof, this 
will not arrest the vengeance of the bill. He is doomed to remain mute, 
although his dearest interests may be involved, or incur its penalties. A gag 
is to be put into his mouth, and he is to be punished if he dare to express a 
preference for one candidate over the other. And let me tell the gentleman, 
these postmasters hold all sorts of political opinions. In my own State a con- 
siderable proportion of their number are Whigs and Antimasons, opposed to 
the present Administration. I might cite other examples to depict the enor- 
mity of this bill, but I consider it wholly unnecessary. I might ascend from 
the justice of the peace or the constable, through all the gradations of elective 
office, State and Federal, to the President of the United States, and show, 
that at each ascending grade, the violation of the rights of the citizen becomes 
more and more outrageous. I might enumerate the weighers and the 
gaugers, and the other proscribed classes of inferior office holders, and paint 
the mad and wanton injustice which this bill would inflict upon them. But 
enough. 

The man who would accept office upon such terms, must forfeit all self- 
respect, and would become at once a fit tool for corruption and for despotism. 
He must be degraded in his own eyes, and degraded in the eyes of his fellow- 
citizens below the rank of a freeman. If you desire to depreciate the Govern- 
ment itself under which we live, you cannot do it more effectually than by 
placing such a stigma on its officers. 

Why, sir, you could not, by any possibility, carry such a law into execu- 
tion. If it should pass to-morrow, it would fall a dead letter upon your 
statute book. I would not advocate a forcible resistance to any law, and do 
not believe that such was the intention of my friend from New Jersey (Mr. 
Wall), when he spoke of resistance ; but does not the Senator from Virginia 
know that laws may be passed of a character so odious, that nobody could be 
found to carry them into execution ? Such are all laws which are entirely 
opposed to the spirit of the age, and the united and overwhelming current 
of public opinion. I firmly believe this to be the character of the present 
bill. 

But suppose me to be mistaken in this opinion, and that the law could be 
carried into execution, what would be the consequences? The doomed 
officer, the postmaster, the weigher or the gauger, is placed in the midst of a 
thinking, acting, busy population. Everything around him is proceeding with 
the impetuosity of steam. Public opinion is marching onward with giant 
strides. The officer is talked at and talked to, daily and hourly, by the sur- 
rounding multitude, whilst the law compels him to close his lips in silence. 
Under such circumstances, it would be impossible for human nature long to 
refrain. What then ? If he utters a syllable on any of the exciting political 
topics of the day, and these are all involved in the perpetual canvass which is 
proceeding for offices, high and low, he is at once seized upon by some harpy 
of an informer. This bill offiirs a most tempting bribe to such eavesdroppers. 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 383 

It would soon call into existence sucli a race, to dog and surround each officer, 
and to catch up every incautious word which might be construed into an 
endeavor to persuade or to dissuade an elector. Each individual in society is 
stimulated by this bill to become a common informer, by the tempting oflfer 
of a bribe of two hundred and fifty dollars in each particular case. The pro- 
scribed officer thus becomes his prey, and, in most cases, will be glad to com- 
promise with him for the payment of a great part, or the whole, of the penalty 
of five hundred dollars, in order to avoid the stigma of perpetual disability to 
hold any office under this Government. 

There is another remark which I desire to make on this branch of the sub- 
ject. Whenever you attempt to violate the plain letter and spirit of the Con- 
stitution, a thousand evils, of which you have never dreamed, present them- 
selves in the perspective. This law can alone be executed by the courts of 
the United States. Where are they situated ? In the large States, such as 
Pennsylvania or Virginia, they are held at great distances from each other. 
A postmaster in either of these States, the income of whose office does not 
exceed fifty dollars per annum, may be dragged from home, a distance of one 
hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, to stand his trial under this bill 
before a federal court. The expense would be enormous, whilst he is obliged 
to appear before a tribunal far from the place where his character, and that 
of his prosecutor, are known and appreciated. Under such circumstances, 
he would almost be certain to become the victim of the common informer, 
under this most unjust and unconstitutional law. He would either be con- 
victed, or compelled to buy his peace at almost any price. 

In conferring the powers enumerated in the Constitution on the Federal 
Government, the States expressly reserved to themselves respectively, or to 
their people, all the powers not delegated by it to the United States, or pro- 
hibited by it to the States. Now, I would ask the Senator from Kentucky 
when, or where, or how has the State of Pennsylvania surrendered to Con- 
gress the right of depriving any of her citizens, who may accept office under 
the General Government, of the freedom of speech or of the press ? Where 
is it declared by the Constitution, either in express terms, or from what clause 
can it fairly be inferred, that Congress may make a forfeiture of ihc dearest 
of all political rights, an indispensable condition of office? Each one of the 
people of Pennsylvania, under her constitution and laws, is secured in the 
inalienable right of speaking his thoughts. The State, as well as each indi- 
vidual citizen, has the deepest interest in the preservation of this right. I ask 
the gentleman to lay his finger on the clause of the Constitution by which it 
has been surrendered. Where is it declared, or from what can it be inferred, 
that because the States have yielded to the Federal Government their citizens 
to execute pubUc trusts under the General Government, that, therefore, they 
have yielded the rights of those citizens to express their opinions freely con- 
cerning public men and public measures ? The proposition appears to me to 
be full of absurdity. In regard to the qualifications of electors, the States 
have granted no power whatever to the United States. This subject they 



384 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

have expressly reserved from federal control. The legislatures of the States, 
and they alone, under the Constitution, possess the power of prescribing the 
qualifications of the electors of members of the House of Representatives in 
Congress. They have reserved the same power to themselves in regard to 
voters for the choice of electors of President and Vice President. What, 
then, does this bill attempt ? To separate two things which reason and the 
Almighty himself have united beyond all power of separation. You might 
as well attempt, by arbitrary laws, to separate human life from the power of 
breathing the vital air, as to detach the elective franchise from freedom of 
thought, of speech, and of the press. In this atmosphere alone can it live, 
and move, and have its being. To speak his thoughts is every free elector's 
inalienable right. Freedom of speech and of the press are both the sword 
and shield of our RepubUcan institutions. To declare that when the citizens 
of a State accept oflQce from the General Government, they thereby forfeit 
this right to express an opinion in relation to the public concerns of their own 
State and of the nation, is palpable tyranny. In the language referred to in 
the report, " it puts bridles into their mouths and saddles upon their backs," 
and degrades them from the rank of a reasoning animal. The English j^rece- 
dent of the Senator was wiser, much wiser, in depriving these officers of the 
right of suffrage altogether. It does not attempt to separate by the power of 
man two things which Heaven itself has indissolubly united. 

If, therefore, the Constitution contained no express provision whatever 
prohibiting Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of speech 
or of the press, I think I have shown conclusively that the power to pass this 
bill could not be inferred from any of its express grants of power. But the 
Constitution is not silent on the subject. Before its adoption by the States, 
it was dreaded by the jealous patriots of the day, that the Federal Govern- 
ment might usurp the liberties of the people by attacking the liberty of 
speech and of the press. They, therefore, insisted upon the insertion of an 
express provision, as an amendment, which, in all time to come, would pre- 
vent Congress from interfering with these inestimable rights. The amend- 
ment to which I have often referred was adopted, and these rights were 
expressly excepted from the powers of the Federal Government. And yet, 
in the very face of this express negative of federal power, we find the Senator 
from Kentucky coming forward with his bill declaring direct war against any 
exercise of the freedom of speech and of the press by those citizens of the 
States who happen to be ofiice holders under the General Government. 

But, says the Senator from Virginia, Congress possess, and have exercised, 
the unquestionable power of creating offices under the Constitution ; and they 
may, therefore, annex to the holding of those offices such a condition as that 
prescribed by the bill, or rather the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky. 
Now, sir, what is this but to say that Congress may declare that any citizen 
of Pennsylvania, who accepts a federal office, shall take it upon condition that 
it shall be forfeited the moment he exercises the dearest political right guar- 
antied to him and every other citizen, by the Constitution of the United 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 385 

States? Can Congress impose any such condition upon an office? If they 
can, they can repeal the most solemn provision of the Constitution, and render 
it a dead letter in regard to every person in the employment of the General 
Government. All mankind may then speak and publish vphat they please, 
except those individuals who have been selected, I hope, generally, for their 
integrity and ability, to execute the important public trusts of the country. 

The Senator from Kentucky has adduced several precedents to prove that 
similar powers have been already exercised by Congress in other cases. Let 
us examine them for a moment. Congress, says he, has declared that an 
Indian agent who shall himself trade with the Indians, shall be punished for 
this act. But why ? It is because this agent is vested with the power of 
granting to our citizens licenses to trade with the Indians, and thus to take 
care that they shall not be imposed upon and cheated. To allow him, there- 
fore, to trade with them himself, would be to make him a judge m his own 
cause, and to withdraw from them that protection which the law intended. 
Besides, Congress have received from the States, by the Constitution, the 
power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes. The Avhole subject is 
thus placed under their control What, then, is this precedent worth? Is 
not the trading of an Indian agent with the Indians an express and palpable 
violation of a duty necessarily involved in his office ? Can any thing be 
clearer than the power and the duty of Congress to punish him for this 
offijnce? But what interference can there be between the performance of the 
duties required by law from a postmaster, or from any other of the proscribed 
officers, and his expression of an opinion to his neighbor, either for or against 
any candidate for public office ? If the postmaster, for example, performs his 
whole official duty, if he receives and delivers the letters entrusted to his care, 
and regularly settles his accounts with the department, what human power 
can arbitrarily place a gag in his mouth, and declare that he shall be punished 
for exercising the freedom of speech and of the press, upon the pretext that 
the exercise of these rights of a freeman are inconsistent with the duties of 
his office ? You might just as well punish him or deprive him of his office 
for speaking or writing on natural philosophy, or mathematics, or any other 
scientific subject. You would have the same power to violate that clause in 
the Constitution conferring upon every man the free exercise of religion, and 
punish him for expressing his opinion on religious subjects, for attending 
prayer meetings or bible societies, or for endeavoring to persuade or dissuade 
any member of the religious society to which he belongs in relation to the 
choice of its pastor. The principle is precisely the same in both cases. Your 
power hath this extent, no more. You can punish the officer for neglecting 
or for violating the duties which appropriately belong to his office. You can 
not repeal the Constitution by declaring it to be an official duty that he shall 
abandon the constitutional right of speaking his thoughts upon any subject 
whatsoever, whether religious, scientific, or political. In other words, you 
have no right to declare that he shall become a slave when he becomes an 
officer. 
I.— 25 



386 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

A similar answer, if it were necessary, might be given to the Senator's 
other precedents. Officers of the customs are prohibited from owning any 
vessel or cargo under a pecuniary penalty. And why? Because they them- 
selves are to direct and superintend the entry of vessels and cargoes belonging 
to other persons and the collection of duties ; and to allow them to transact 
this business for themselves, would be to make them judges in their own 
cause. It would be an evident violation of the duty naturally attached to 
their office. But will any one contend that their constitutional freedom of 
speech, in regard to candidates for office, is incompatible with the proper 
entry or unloading of vessels engaged either in foreign commerce or the 
coasting trade? 

So the register of a land office is prohibited from entering lands in his own 
name, or, in other words, from selling lands to himself. 

Such are the precedents which the Senator has cited to justify himself in 
depriving the officers embraced by his bill of the right of freedom of speech 
and of the press. 

But I do not mean even to rest the constitutional question here. From 
the very nature of the Constitution itself, two great political parties must ever 
exist in this country. You may call them by what names you Avill, their 
principles must ever continue to be the same. The one, dreading federal 
power, will ever be friendly to a strict construction of the powers delegated 
to the Federal Government and to State - rights. The other equally dreading 
federal weakness, will ever advocate such a liberal construction of the Consti- 
tution as will confer upon the General Government as much power as possible, 
consistently with a free interpretation of the terms of the instrument. The 
one party is alarmed at the danger of consolidation ; the other at that of dis- 
union. In the days of the elder Adams the party friendly to a liberal con- 
struction of the Constitution got into power. And what did they do ? Among 
other things, in the very face of that clause of the Constitution which pro- 
hibited Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of speech or of 
the press, they passed the sedition law. What were its provisions? It 
punished false, scandalous, and malicious libels against the Government of the 
United States, either House of Congress, or the President, by a fine not 
exceeding two thousand dollars and imprisonment not exceeding two years. 

At the present day, it would be useless to waste the time of the Senate in 
proving that this law was a violation of the Constitution. It is now admitted 
that Congress, in passing it, had transcended their powers. If any principle 
has been established beyond a doubt by the almost unanimous opinion of the 
people of the United States, it is, that the sedition law was unconstitutional. 
Such is the strong and universal feeling against it, that if it could now be 
revived, the authors would probably meet a similar fate with those deluded 
and desperate men in France who have themselves lately fallen victims upon 
the same altar on which they had determined to sacrifice the liberty of the 
press. 

The popular odium which followed this law was not so much excited by its 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 387 

particular provisions, as by the fact, that any law upon the subject was a viola- 
tion of the Constitution, and would establish a precedent for giving such a 
construction to it as would swallow up the rights of the States and of their 
people in the gulf of federal power. 

The Constitution had declared that " Congress shall pass no law abridging 
the freedom of speech or of the press." Its framers well knew that, under 
the laws of each of the States composing this Union, libels were punishable. 
They, therefore, left the character of all oflBcers created under the Constitution 
and laws of the United States to be protected by the laws of the several 
States. They were afraid to give this Government any authority over the 
subject of libels, lest its colossal power might be wielded against the liberty of 
the press. Congress were, therefore, prohibited from passing any law upon 
the subject, whether good or bad. It was not merely because the law was 
unjust in itself, though it was bad enough. Heaven knows, that the indignant 
Republicans of that day rose against it ; but it was because it violated the 
Constitution. It expired by its own limitation in March, 1801 ; but not until 
it had utterly prostrated the political party which gave it birth. 

Now, sir, I shall say a few words concerning the Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions of 1798 ; although the Senator from Virginia may consider it 
sacrilege in me to discuss this subject. I have at all times, ever since I read 
and understood these resolutions, held to the political doctrines which they 
inculcate ; and I can assure the Senator I have studied them with care. I will 
read a few extracts from the Virginia resolutions : 

The General Assembly, in the third resolution, " doth explicitly and 
peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as 
resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the 
plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact — and as 
no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that 
compact;" and in the fourth resolution, they express their deep regret, "that 
a spirit has, in sundry instances, been manifested by the Federal Government, 
to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter 
which defines them." In regard to the sedition law, they declare that its 
passage was the exercise of " a power not delegated by the Constitution ; but, 
on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amend- 
ments thereto ; a power, which, more than any other, ought to produce 
universal alarm ; because it is levelled against that right of freely examining 
public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people 
thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of 
every other right." 

Now, sir, what is the essence, what is the root of all these resolutions ? It 
consists of one plain, clear, fundamental principle, from which all others pro- 
ceed as branches. It is this, that patriotism — that the permanence of our 
institutions — that all the principles of correct construction require, that the 
Federal Government shall be limited to the express powers granted to it by 
the States, and that no implied powers shall ever be exercised, except such as 



388 



LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



are evidently and plainly necessary to carry the express powers into eflfect. 
This is the foundation, the corner stone, the vital principle of all the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions. It was because the sedition law violated this 
principle, that the Republican statesmen of Virginia and Kentucky opposed it 
with such a determined spirit. It was, as Mr. Madison says in his report, 
because such a loose construction of the Constitution as would bring this law 
within its pale, would lay the foundation from which the friends of a strong 
central government might proceed to rob the States and the people of their 
liberties, and establish a consolidated government. It was the first stride 
towards a limited monarchy. 

The Federalists of that day honestly believed that the Government should 
be strengthened at the centre, and that the pulsations of the heart vrere not 
powerful enough to extend a wholesome circulation to the extremities. They, 
therefore, used every effort to enlarge the powers of the Federal Government 
by construction. This was the touchstone which then divided parties, and 
which will continue to divide them until, which God forbid, the Government 
shall cease to exist. 

Now, sir, if I have correctly stated the principle which runs through all the 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, I would ask whether the bill now before 
the Senate is not a more palpable violation of this principle than the sedition 
law. I shall now proceed to establish this position. 

In the first place, then, the sedition law did not interfere with the freedom 
of speech. The citizen might speak wiiat he thought and say what he pleased 
without subjecting himself to its penalties. Under the despotisms of Europe 
there is a strict censorship over the press. Everything written for publication 
must undergo the supervision and correction of a Government censor before 
it can be published. In the most despotic countries, however, some indulgence 
is granted to the liberty of speech on political questions. The bill establishes 
more than a universal censorship over the freedom of speech. It compels the 
officer to be silent altogether on pohtical questions. He dare not utter a word 
without incurring its penalties. In this country, every pubhc question con- 
nects itself with our elections. If there be two candidates for any State 
Legislature, and the election should turn upon internal improvements, or the 
division of a county, the officer is as much exposed to the universal sweep of 
this bill, in case he utters a word in favor of the one or against the other, as 
though it were the Presidential election. He is equally doomed to silence 
in the one case as in the other. Such tyranny is unknown to the sedition 
law. 

Whilst I was abroad some years ago, I heard an anecdote highly creditable 
to the King of Prussia, who, although a despot, is, by his subjects, called a 
Democratic King. The revolutionary war of Poland against Russia was then 
raging, and the Polish subjects of the Prussian king were highly excited in 
favor of their brethren under the dominion of Russia. They talked very 
freely in favor of taking part in the contest ; of casting off the Prussian yoke, 
and uniting with their brethren in re-establishing the independence of Poland. 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 389 

The counsellors of the king advised him to prohibit and to punish this freedom 
of speech. He answered that he would do no such thing ; that he would 
suffer them to express their opinions, and that there was less danger that they 
would rise against his government than if they remained silent. This was the 
remark of a liberal and a wise man, who had been instructed in the school of 
adversity. 

But, in this favored land of liberty, in the nineteenth century, we are 
about to deny to our citizens the privilege of speaking their thoughts. This 
is the first attempt which I have ever known or read of, either in England 
or in this country, to punish the expression of opinions relative to candidates 
for office as a crime. If ever this was done in England, even in the reigns of 
the Tudors or the Stuarts, it must have been a Star Chamber offence. In the 
more enlightened despotisms of Europe, they will learn, with astonishment, 
that a bill has been introduced into the Senate of the United States, propos- 
ing- to punish a postmaster for expressing his opinion in favor of a candidate 
for office, as if this were an enormous crime, with a fine of five hundred 
dollars, and a perpetual disability to hold any other office under the Govern- 
ment. Even under the common law of England, oral slander is not punish- 
able as a crime. The party injured by it is left to his private remedy. 

In the second place, the sedition law, although it did abridge, did not, like 
this bill, totally destroy the freedom of the press. The sedition law deprived 
no man of the right or the power, in the first instance, to write and publish 
to the world any strictures upon the Grovernment which he might think 
proper. To be sure, if in exercising this privilege he violated the truth, he 
was made responsible to its penalties. This bill reaches the very fountains of 
thought. Its object is to prevent its victims from speaking or writing at all. 
No matter how innocent, or praiseworthy, or true, may be the conversation or 
the publication, still if it can be construed into an endeavor to persuade any 
elector to give his vote for a particular candidate, he is doomed to a fine of 
five hundred dollars, and a perpetual disability to hold office. 

Again : under the sedition law, the accused was permitted to protect him- 
self against its penalties, by giving the truth of his charge in evidence. Any 
individual who had accused the President of the United States of being a 
bad and dangerous man, who was aiming a blow at the liberties of his coun- 
try, and desired to usurp the powers of the Government by a latitudinarian 
construction of the Constitution, was protected by this law from all responsi- 
bility, provided he could prove the truth of these allegations to the satisfaction 
of a court and jury of his countrymen. Not so the present bill. If a post- 
master, or a land officer, or a weigher, or a ganger, should endeavor to dis- 
suade any elector from voting for a particular candidate, and should say that 
this candidate has been guilty of a crime, and therefore his election would be 
dangerous to the country, and is brought before a court and jury for trial 
under this bill, he must be convicted, although he may be able to prove the 
truth of his charge by evidence as clear as a sunbeam. The old English 
maxim, " the greater the truth the greater the Ubel," is again revived, with 



390 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

some show of reason ; because the language of truth would be more power- 
ful in persuading or dissuading an elector than that of falsehood. Although 
every member of the court and the jury might personally know that what 
the accused had uttered was the truth, yet, under the provisions of this bill, 
they would be bound to convict and sentence him to suffer its penalties. 

I think I have thus established my position that this bill is worse, and more 
daringly unconstitutional, than the sedition law. 

I now approach the argument of the Senator from Virginia in favor of the 
constitutionality of this bill. The old argument in favor of the sedition law, 
as stated by Mr. Madison in his report, was that the general phrases in the 
preamble and one clause of the Constitution were sufficiently powerful to 
extend the limited grants of power contained in the body of the instrument, 
and to confer upon Congress the authority to enact any law they might think 
proper for the common defence and the general welfare. This doctrine has 
long since been exploded, and was not adverted to by the Senator from Vir- 
ginia. We are informed by the same authority, that another argument used, 
was, that all the State Legislatures had passed laws for the punishment of 
libels; and that, therefore, the same power belonged to the Government of 
the United States. A similar argument could not be urged by the Senator 
m support of this bill ; because no State Legislature ever has, and I will 
venture to say no State Legislature ever will pass such a bill as that now 
before the Senate. To what argument then did the Senator resort? I shall 
endeavor to state it fairly. He asks if a judge were to use the freedom of 
speech or of the press, in canvassing the merits of a cause before the people, 
which it would become his duty afterwards to decide, would it be an abridg- 
ment of this freedom to punish him for such conduct? I answer, certainly 
not. But does not the gentleman perceive that the offence in this case is sub- 
stantive and independent, and amounts to a total violation of his official duty, 
for which he ought to be impeached ? The language, oral or printed, which 
he has used, is the mere agent which he has employed in the commission of 
the offence. This argument is a begging of the question ; for it assumes 
that, under the Constitution, Congress possess the power to punish one citizen 
for persuading another, by fair argument, to give his vote for or against any 
candidate for office. This is the very principle to be established. Again he 
asks, suppose one of the officers embraced by the bill were to use the freedom 
of speech or of the press, in saying to an elector, if you will give your vote 
for such a candidate, I will procure you an office, would not such an officer be 
punishable ? I answer, certainly he would under the State laws : because 
this would be an attempt to procure a vote by corrupt and improper means. 
It is a distinct offence, the punishment of which in no manner interferes with 
the liberty of speech or the press when exercised to accomjilish constitutional 
purposes. A similar answer might be given to his interrogatory in regard to 
giving a challenge, by word or by writing, to fight a duel. The last question, 
which capped the climax of his argument, was, if a man be guilty of a false 
and malicious libel against an innocent person, may you not punish him, under 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 391 

the Constitution, without invading the freedom of speech or of the press — 
because it is not the words he may use which you punish, but the falsehood 
of the charge, the evil intention, and the injury inflicted? I ask the Senator 
if this argument is not a justification of the sedition law to the fullest extent ? 
I have taken down the Senator's words, and cannot be mistaken in their 
meaning. What did the sedition law declare ? That the authors of " false, 
scandalous and maUcious " libels, with the evil intentions enumerated in the 
act, should incur its penalties. It was not the mere words published that 
were punished, but it was their falsehood, their malice, and their evil inten- 
tions. The constitutionality of the sedition law is, therefore, embraced not 
only within the spirit, but within the very words, of the Senator's argument. 
Has he not, however unconsciously, defended the sedition law ? This argu- 
ment, to my knowledge, never occurred to those who passed that law ; but 
it is one which, if well founded, would give us the power to-morrow to pass 
another sedition law. 

Do not Senators perceive that the passage of this bill would utterly dis- 
franchise a large and respectable class of our people ? Under it, what would 
be the condition of all the editors of your political journals, whose business 
and Avhose duty it is to enlighten public opinion in regard to the merits or 
demerits of candidates for ofiSce ? Pass this law, and you declare that no edi- 
tor of a public paper, of either party, is capable or worthy of holding any of 
the proscribed offices. He must at once either abandon his paper, and with 
it the means of supporting himself and his family, or he must surrender any 
little office which he may hold under the Government. 

And yet this bill is supported by my friend from Virginia, who, to use his 
own language, " has been imbued with the principles of Democracy, and a 
regard for State rights, from his earliest youth." If such a charge should ever 
be made against him hereafter, his speech and his vote in favor of this bill, 
will acquit him before any court in Christendom, where the truth may be 
given in evidence. I yet trust that he may never vote for its passage. 

Every measure of this kind betrays a want of confidence in the intelligence 
and patriotism of the American people. It is founded on a distrust of their 
judgment and integrity. Do you suppose that when a man is appointed a 
collector or a postmaster, he acquires any more influence over the people than 
he had before? No, sir I On the contrary, his influence is often diminished, 
instead of being increased. The people of this country are abundantly capa- 
ble of judging whether he is more influenced by love of country or love of 
office. If they should determine that his motives are purely mercenary for 
supporting a political party, this will destroy his influence. If he be a noisy, 
violent, and meddling politician, he will do the administration under which 
he has been appointed, much more harm than good. Let me assure gentle- 
men that the people are able to take care of themselves. They do not 
require the interposition of Congress to prevent them from being deceived 
and led astray by the influence of office holders. Whilst this is my fixed 
opinion, I think the number of federal officers ought to be strictly limited to 



392 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the actual necessities of the Government Pursue this course, and, my life 
for it, all the land officers, and postmasters, and weighers, and gaugers, which 
you shall send abroad over the country, can never influence the people to 
betray their own cause. For my own part, I entertain the most perfect 
confidence in their intelligence as well as integrity. 

That office holders possess comparatively but Httle influence over the peo- 
ple, will conclusively appear from the brief history of the last two years, the 
period during which this dreaded man, Mr. Van Buren, has been in office. 
What has all this alarming influence of the office holders effected at the only 
points where they are to be found in any considerable number ? In the city 
of Philadelphia, notwithstanding all the influence of tlie custom-house, the 
post-office, and the mint, the majority at the last election against the admin- 
istration was tremendous, being, I believe, upwards of four thousand. The 
Prostorian guards, as they have been called, performed but little service on 
tliat day in that city. On the other hand, look at the interior of Pennsyl- 
vania. There the governor, wliose patronage within the limits of the State 
Avas as great, under the old Constitution, as that of the King of England, had 
filled every office with enemies of the present administration. Of this I do 
not complain; for, whether right or wrong, it has been the long established 
practice of both parties. It is true that many of the postmasters were friendly 
to the administration ; but it is equally certain, that a large proportion of 
them warmly espoused the cause of the opposition. What was the result? 
Those wielding the vast patronage Avere entirely routed, notwithstanding the 
exertions of the office holders. Gentlemen may quiet their alarms, and be 
assured that the people cannot bo persuaded to abandon their principles by the 
influence of men in office. 

Again : let us look at the State of New York for anotlier example. There 
the Albany regency were seated in power. The Democratic party was well 
drilled. All the office holders of the State and of the city were friendly to 
the administration. Besides, in my opinion, they fought in the righteous 
cause ; and this same abused Albany regency who were their leadei-s, was 
composed of as able and as honest men as were ever at the head of any State 
government. What was the result there ? With all this official power and 
patronage, both of the State and Federal Governments, we were beaten, 
horse, foot and dragoons. There is not the least necessity for passing an 
unconstitutional law, to save the people from the influence of the office 
holders. 

Have we not been beaten in all the large cities of the Union, where only 
there are federal officers in any considerable number ? What has been our 
fate in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans ? We 
have been vanquislied in all of them. The hobgoblins and chimeras dire re- 
specting the influence of office holders, wliich terrify gentlemen, exist only 
in their own imagination. The people of this country are not the tame and 
servile creatures who can be seduced from their purpose by the persuasion 
of the office holders. It is true that in 1828 I did say that the office holders 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 393 

were the enlisted soldiers of that administration by which they were sus- 
tained. This was too strong an expression. But admit them to be enlisted 
soldiers ; and whilst I do not deny them some influence, there is no danger 
to be apprehended from it, as long as there is virtue and intelligence among 
our people. 

And here I hope the Senator from Kentucky will pardon me for suggest- 
ing to him an amendment to his bill. He has, I think, made one or two mis- 
takes in the classification of his officers ; though, in the general, it is suQiciently 
perfect. The principle would seem to have been to separate what may be 
called the aristocracy of office holders from the plebeians. Those of the ele- 
vated class are still permitted to enjoy the freedom of speech and of the press, 
whilst the hard-working operatives among them are denied this privilege. 
The heads of departments and bureaus, the officers of the army and navy, the 
superintendents and officers of our mints, and our district attorneys are not 
affected by this bill. These gentlemen are privileged by their elevation. 
They are too high to be reached by its provisions. Who, then, ought to care 
whether weighers and gaugers, and village postmasters, and hard-handed 
draymen, and such inferior people shall be permitted to express their thoughts 
on public affairs ? I would suggest, however, that the collectors of our prin- 
cipal seaports, the marshals of our extensive judicial districts, and the post- 
masters in our principal cities receive compensation sufficient to enable them 
to figure in " good society." They ought to rank with the district attorneys, 
and should be elevated from the plebeian to the patrician rank of office 
holders. They ought to be allowed the freedom of speech and of the press. 
As to the subordinate officers, they are not worth the trouble of a thought. 

To be sure there is one palpable absurdity on the face of the bill. Its 
avowed purpose is to prevent office holders from exercising an influence in 
elections. Why, then, except from its operation all those office holders, who, 
from their station in society, can exercise the most extensive influence, and 
confine its provisions to the humbler, but not less meritorious class, whose 
opinions can have but a limited influence over their fellow-men? The dis- 
trict attorney, for example, is excepted — the very man of all others, who, 
from his position and talents, has the best opportunity of exerting an exten- 
sive influence. He may ride over his district, and make political speeches to 
secure the election of his favorite candidate. He is too high a mark for the 
gentleman's bill. But if the subordinates of the custom-house, or the petty 
postmaster at the cross-roads with an income of fifty dollars per annum, shall 
dare, even in private conversation, to persuade an elector to vote for or 
against any candidate, he is to be punished by a fine of five hundred dollars, 
and a perpetual disability to hold any office under the Government. Was 
there ever a bill more unequal or more unjust ? 

Now, sir, I might here, with great propriety, and very much to the relief 
both of my audience and myself, leave this subject ; but there are still some 
other observations which I conceive it to be my duty to add to what I have 
already said. Most of them will be elicited by the very strong remarks of 



394 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

my friend from Virginia ; for I trust that I may still be permitted to call him 
by that name. 

He and I entered the House of Representatives almost together. I believe 
he came into it but two years after myself. We soon formed a mutual 
friendship, which has ever since, I may say, on my part, with great sincerity, 
continued to exist. We fought shoulder to shoulder, and his great powers 
were united with my feeble efforts in prostrating the administration of the 
younger Adams. General Jackson came into power ; and during the whole 
period of that administration he was the steady, unwavering supporter of all 
its leading measures, except the Specie Circular and his advocacy of the cur- 
rency bill; and, on that bill, I stood by him, in opposition to the administra- 
tion. Whilst this man of destiny was in power — this man of the lion heart, 
whose will the Whigs declared was law, and whose roaring terrified all the 
other beasts of the forest, and subdued them into silence — where was then 
the Senator from Virginia? He was our chosen champion in the fight. 
Whilst General Jackson was exerting all this tremendous influence, and mar- 
shalling all his trained bands of office holders to do his bidding, according to 
the language of the opposition, these denunciations had no terror for the 
Senator from Virginia. Never in my life did I perform a duty of friendship 
with greater ardor than when, on one occasion, I came to his rescue from 
an unjust attack made against him by the Whigs in relation to a part of his 
conduct whilst minister in France. After holding out so long together, ought 
he not, at least, to have parted from us in peace, and bade us a kind adieu ? 
In abandoning our camp, why did he shoot Parthian arrows behind him? 
In taking leave of us, I hope not forever, is it not too hard for us to hear 
ourselves denounced by the gentleman in the language which he has used ? 
" He is amazed and bewildered with the scenes passing before him. Whither, 
he asks, will the mad dominion of party carry us ? His mind is filled with 
despondency as to the fate of his country. Shall we emulate the servility of 
the senate and people of Rome ? You already have your Prtetorian bands 
in this city." I might quote from his speech other phrases of a similar char- 
acter ; but these are sufficient. I do not believe that any of these expressions 
were aimed at me personally; yet they strike me with the mass of my political 
friends, and I feel bound to give them a passing notice. 

And why, let me ask the Senator, why did he not sooner make the dis- 
covery of the appalling danger of executive influence ? Is there more to be 
dreaded from that cause, under the present administration, than under that 
which is past? Is Martin Van Buren more formidable than General Jackson 
was? Let his favorite author, De Tocqueville, answer this question. He 
says, " the power of General Jackson perpetually increases, but that of the 
President declines ; in his hands the Federal Government is strong, lid it ivill 
pass enfeebled into the hands of his successor." Do not all now know this to 
be the truth ? Has not the Government passed enfeebled into the hands of 
his successor ? We see it, and feel it, and know it, from every thing which 
is passing around us. The civilian has succeeded the conqueror ; and, I must 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 395 

be permitted to say, has exercised bis high powers with great moderation and 
purity of purpose. In what manner has he ever abused his patronage ? In 
this particular, of what can the gentleman complain ? 

In February, 1828, I did say that the office holders were the enlisted sol- 
diers of the administration. But did I then propose to gag them ? Did I 
propose to deprive them of the freedom of speech and of the press? No, sir, 
no ! Notwithstanding the number of them scattered over the country, I was 
not afraid of their influence. On the contrarj^, I commended the administra- 
tion for adhering to its friends. I then used the following language : 

"In my humble judgment, the present administration could not have 
proceeded a single year, with the least hope of re-election, but for their 
patronage. This patronage may have been used unwisely, as my friend from 
Kentucky [Mr. Letcher] (and I am still proud to call him my friend, not- 
withstanding our political opposition) has insinuated. I have never blamed 
them, I shall never blame them, for adhering to their friends. Be true to 
your friends and they will be true to you, is the dictate both of justice and 
of sound policy. I shall never participate in abusing the administration for 
remembering their friends. If you go too much abroad with this patronage, 
for the purpose of making new friends, you will offend your old ones, and 
make but very insincere converts." 

What was my opinion in 1828, when I was in the opposition, is still my 
opinion in 1839, when I am in the majority. I say now, that the adminis- 
tration which goes abroad with its patronage to make converts of its enemies, 
at the expense of its friends, acts both with ingratitude and injustice. Such 
an administration deserves to be prostrated. Although neither from principle 
nor from feeling am I a root and branch man, yet, in this respect, I adopt the 
opinion of General Washington, the first, the greatest, the wisest, and the 
best of our Presidents. I prefer him either to General Jackson or to the great 
apostle of American liberty. This opinion, however, may proceed from the 
relics of old Federalism. On this subject General Washington says : " I shall 
not, whilst I have the honor to administer the Government, bring a man into 
any office of consequence, knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to 
the measures which the General Government is pursuing ; for this, in my 
opinion, would be a sort of pohtical suicide. That it would embarrass its 
movements is certain." 

Now, sir, if any freak of destiny should ever place me in one of these 
executive departments, and I feel very certain that it never will, I shall tell 
you the course I would pursue. I should not become an inquisitor of the 
political opinions of the subordinate office holders, who are receiving salaries 
of some eight hundred or a thousand dollars a year. For the higher and 
more responsible offices, however, I would select able, faithful, and well-tried 
political friends who felt a deep and devoted interest in the success of my 
measures. And this not for the purpose of concealment, for no public officer 
ought to be afraid of the scrutiny of the world; but that they might cheer- 
fully co-operate with me in promoting what I believed to be the public 



396 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

interest. I would have no person around me, either to hold back in the traces, 
or to thwart and defeat my purposes. With General Washington I believe 
that any other course " would be a sort of political suicide. " 

In executing the duties of a public office, I should act upon the same 
principles that would govern my conduct in regard to a private trust. If the 
Senator from Virginia were to constitute me his attorney, to transact any im- 
portant business, I should never employ assistants whom I believed to be 
openly and avowedly hostile to his interests. 

But says the Senator, you already have your Praetorian bands in this city. 
He doubtless alludes to the officeholders in the different departments of the 
Government; and, I ask, is Mr. Van Buren's influence over them greatly to 
be dreaded ? If, sir, the President relies upon such troops he will most cer- 
tainly be defeated. These Praitorian bands are, to a great extent, on the side 
of the Senator from Kentucky and his political friends. I would now do 
them great injustice if I were to call them the enlisted soldiers of the admin- 
istration. Whilst General Jackson was here they did keep tolerably quiet, but 
now I understand that many of these heads of bureaus and clerks use the 
freedom of speech and of the press without reserve against the measures of 
his successor. Of course I speak from common report. God forbid that I 
should become an inquisitor as to any man's politics. It is generally under- 
stood that about one-half of them are open enemies of the present adminis- 
tration. I have some acquaintance with a few of those who are called its 
friends ; and among this few I know several, who, although they declare they 
are in favor of the re-election of Mr. Van Buren, yet they are decidedly 
opposed to all his prominent measures. Surrounded by such Praetorian bands, 
what has this tyrant done ? Nothing, literally nothing. I beheve he is the 
very last man in the country who can justly be charged with using his official 
patronage to control the freedom of elections. His forbearance towards his 
political enemies in office will unquestionably injure him to some extent, and 
especially in those States where, under the common party law, no person 
dreams of being permitted to hold office from his political enemies. His 
liberality in this respect has been condemned by many of his friends, whilst 
he is accused by his enemies of using his official patronage for corrupt political 
purposes. This is a hard fate. The Senator must, therefore, pardon me, after 
having his own high authority in flivor of General Jackson's administration, 
if, under that of his successor, I cannot now see the dangers of executive 
patronage in a formidable light. 

There was one charge made by the Senator from Virginia against the 
present administration, which I should have been the first man to sustain, had 
I believed it to be well founded. Had the President evinced a determination, 
in the face of all his principles and professions, to form a permanent connection 
in violation of law, between the Government and the Bank of the United 
States, or any other State bank, he should, in this particular, have encountered 
my unqualified opposition. In such an event, I should have been willing to 
serve under the command of the Senator against the administration ; and 



INTERFERENCE OF FEDERAL OFFICERS. 397 

hundreds and thousands of the unbought and incorruptible Democracy would 
have rallied to our standard. I am convinced, however, from the reports of 
the Secretaries of the Treasury and of War, and from the other lights wlaich 
have been shed upon the subject, that " their poverty and not their will con- 
sented " to the partial and limited connection which resulted from the sale of 
the bond to the Bank of the United States. Such seems to have been the 
general opinion on this floor, because no Senator came to the aid of the gen- 
tleman from Virginia in sustaining this charge. " Where was Roderick then? " 
Why did not the Senator from Kentucky come to the rescue and sustain his 
friend from Virginia in the accusation against the administration of having 
again connected itself with the Bank of the United States ? 

Tlie Senator from Virginia has informed us, that in his State, a law exists, 
prohibiting any man who holds office under the Federal Government from 
holding, at the same time, a State office. This law prevents the same indi- 
vidual from serving two masters. A similar law, I believe, exists in every 
State of this Union, If there is not, there ought to be. The Federal and 
State Governments ought to be kept as distinct and independent of each 
other as possible. Tlie General Government ought never to be permitted to 
insinuate itself into the concerns of the States, by using their officers as its 
officers. These incompatible laws proceed from a wise and wholesome 
jealousy of federal power, and a proper regard for State rights, I heartily 
approve them. Then, sir, if there be danger in trusting a postmaster of the 
General Government with the commission of a magistrate under State 
authority, how infinitely more dangerous would it be to suffer the administra- 
tion to connect itself with all the State banks of the country ? What immense 
influence over the people of the States could the Federal Government thus 
acquire I Suffi,-r it to deposit the public money at pleasure with these banks, 
and permit them to loan it out for their own benefit, and you establish a vast 
federal influence, not over weighers and gaugers and postmasters, but over the 
presidents, and directors, and cashiers, and debtors, and creditors of these 
institutions. You bind them to you by the strongest of all ties, that of self- 
interest ; and they are men who, from their position, cannot fail to exercise 
an extensive influence over the people of the States. I am a State rights 
man, and am therefore opposed to any connection between this Government 
and the State banks ; and last of all to such a connection with the Bank of 
the United States, which is the most powerful of them all. This is one of the 
chief reasons why I am in favor of an independent Treasury. And yet, 
friendly to State rights as the Senator professes to be, he complains of the 
President for opposing such a connection with the State banks, and thereby 
voluntarily depriving himself of the power and influence which must ever 
result from such an union. 

There are other reasons why I am friendly to an independent Treasury ; 
but this is not the proper occasion to discuss them. I shall merely advert to 
one which, in my opinion, renders an immediate separation from the banks 
indispensable to the public interest. The importation of foreign goods into 



398 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

New York, since the commencement of the present year, very far exceeds, 
according to our information, the corresponding importations during the year 
1836, although they were greater in that year than they had ever been since 
the origin of our Government. This must at once create a large debt against 
us in England. Meanwhile, what is our condition at home ? New York has 
established what is called a free banking law, under whose provisions more 
than fifty banks had been established in the beginning of January last, and I 
know not how many since, with permission to increase their capital to four 
hundred and eighty-seven millions of dollars. These banks do not even pro- 
fess to proceed upon the ancient, safe and well estabhshed principle of making 
the specie in their vaults bear some just and reasonable proportion to their 
circulation and deposits. Another and a novel principle is adopted. State 
loans and mortgages upon real estate are made to take the place of gold and 
silver ; and an amount of bank notes may be issued equal to the amount of 
these securities deposited with the comptroller. There is no restriction what- 
ever imposed on these banks in regard to specie, except that they are required 
to hold eleven pence in the dollar, not of their circulation and deposits united, 
but of their circulation alone. Well may that able ofiRcer have declared, in 
his report to the legislature, that " it is now evident that the point of danger 
is not an exclusive metallic currency, but an exclusive paper currency, so 
redundant and universal as to excite apprehensions for its stability." The 
amount of paper issues of these banks, and the amount of bank credits, must 
rapidly expand the paper circulation, and again produce extravagant specula- 
tion. The example of New York will have a powerful influence on the 
other States of the Union. Already has Georgia established a free banking 
law; and a bill for the same purpose is now before the legislature of Penn- 
sylvania. If the signs of the times do not deceive me, we shall have another 
explosion sooner, much sooner than I had anticipated. The Senator from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) nods his assent. [Here Mr. Webster said, " I 
think so also."] This paper bubble must, from its nature, go on rapidly 
expanding, until it reaches the bursting point. The recent suspension of 
specie payments by the Branch Bank of Mobile, in the State of my friend 
from Alabama, (Mr. King), may be the remote and distant thunder premoni- 
tory of the approaching storm. This is all foreign, however, to the subject 
before the Senate. I desire now to declare solemnly in advance, that if this 
explosion should come, and the money of the people in the Treasury should 
again be converted into irredeemable bank paper and bank credits, the admin- 
istration will be guiltless of the deed. We have tried, but tried in vain, to 
establish an independent Treasury, where this money would be safe, in the 
custody of ofBcers responsible to the people. 

There is one incident in relation to the Bank of the United States which 
my friend from Virginia may be curious to know. Under the Pennsylvania 
charter it was prohibited from issuing notes under ten dollars. I had fondly 
hoped that this example might be gradually followed by our legislature in 
regard to the other banks, until the time should arrive when our whole circu- 



ELEMENTS OF THE WHIG PARTY. 399 

lation under ten dollars should consist of gold and silver. The free banking 
law of New York has enabled the bank to nullify this restriction. Under 
this law it has established a bank in the city of New York, the capital of 
which may be increased to $50,000,000, and has transferred to the comptrol- 
ler of that State Michigan State loan to the amount of $200,000. And what 
notes, Mr. President, do you suppose it has taken in lieu of this amount of 
loan ? Not an assortment of different denominations, as the other banks have 
done, but forty thousand five dollar notes. These five dollar notes will be 
paid out and circulated by the bank at Philadelphia ; and thus the wise ten 
dollar restriction contained in its Pennsylvania charter is completely annulled. 

If, therefore, I could believe for a moment that this Government intended 
to form a permanent connection with the Bank of the United States, and 
again make it the general depository and fiscal agent of the Treasury, even 
if no other principle were involved than that of the enormous increase of 
executive patronage which must necessarily follow, I should at once stand 
with my friend from Virginia in opposition to the administration. But I 
would not go over with him to the enemy's camp. I have somewhere read 
a eulogy on the wisdom of the Catholic church, for tolerating much freedom 
of opinion in non-essentials among its members. A pious, an enthusiastic, 
and an ardent spirit, which, if it belonged to any Protestant church, might 
produce a schism, is permitted to establish a new order, and thus to benefit, 
instead of injuring, the ancient establishment. I might point to a St. Domi- 
nick and a Loyola for examples. Now, sir, I admit that the Whig party is 
very Catholic in this respect. It tolerates gi-eat difference of opinion. Its 
unity almost consists in diversity. In that party we recognize " the Demo- 
cratic Antimasonic " branch. Yes, sir, this is the approved name. I need 
not mention the names of its two distinguished leaders. The peculiar tenet 
of this respectable portion of the universal political Whig church is a horrible 
dread of the murderers of Morgan, whose ghost, like that of Hamlet's father, 
walks abroad, and revisits the pale glimpses of the m.oon, seeking vengeance 
on his murderers. I wish they could be found, and punished as they deserve. 
Though not abolitionists in the mass, they do not absolutely reject, though 
they may receive with an awkward grace, the overtures and aid of the aboli- 
tionists. In my portion of the country, at least, the abolitionists are either 
incorporated with this branch of the party, or hang upon its outskirts. The 
Senator from Virginia and myself could not, I think, go over to this section 
of the party, nor would we be received by it into full communion. The 
Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) will, I think, find to his cost that he has 
done himself great injury with this branch of the opposition, by the manly 
and patriotic sentiments which he expressed a few days ago on the subject 
of abolition. 

Then comes the Whig party proper, in which the Senator from Kentucky 
stands pre-eminent. I need not detail its principles. Now, I humbly appre- 
hend, that even if the President of the United States should determine to 
ally himself with the bank, and force us to abandon him on that account, 



400 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

neither the Senator from Virginia nor myself could find refuge in the bosom of 
this party. We have both sinned against it beyond forgiveness. We were 
both in favor of the removal of the deposits — an offence vrhich, with them 
like original sin, "brought death into the world, and all our woe." For this 
no penitence can atone. 

Again: we both voted for the expunging resolution, which, in their opin- 
ion, was an act of base subserviency and man worship, and, withal, a palpable 
violation of the Constitution. So dreadful was this offence, that my friend 
from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] will never get over it. He has solemnly pledged 
himself to cry aloud and spare not, until this foul blot shall be removed from 
the journals of the Senate. I should be glad to know why he has not yet 
introduced his annual resolution to efface this unsightly stain from the record 
of our proceedings. 

In short, we should be compelled to form a separate branch of the Whig 
party. We should be the deposit-removing, expunging, force bill, anti-bank 
Jackson Whigs. We should carry with us enough of locofocoism and other 
combustible materials to blow them all up. They had better have a care 
of us. 

I hope the Senator may yet remain with us, and be persuaded that his old 
friends upon this floor do not resemble either the servile band in the Roman 
Senate under the first Caesar, or that which afterwards degraded themselves 
so low as to make the favorite horse of one of his successors high priest and 
consul. He can never be fully received into the communion of the faithful 
Whigs. Although the fathers of the church here may grant him absolution, 
yet the rank and file of the party throughout the country will never ratify the 
deed. 

I was pleased to hear the Senator from Virginia, on yesterday, make the 
explanation which he did to the Senator from North Carolina, [Mr. Strange] 
in regard to what he had said in favor of the British government. I cheer- 
fully take the explanation. I did suppose he had pronounced a high-wrought 
eulogy upon that government; but it would not be fair to hold him, or any 
other Senator, to the exact meaning of words uttered in the heat and ardor 
of debate. 

I agree with him that we are indebted for several of our most valuable 
institutions to our British ancestors. We have derived from them the princi- 
ples of liberty established and consecrated by magna charta, the trial by jury, 
the petition of right, the habeus corpus act, and the revolution of 1688. And 
yet, notwithstanding all this, I should be very unwilling to make the British 
government a model for our legislation in Republican America. Look at its 
effects in practice. Is it a government which sheds its benign influence, like 
the dews of Heaven, upon all its subjects? Or is it not a government where 
the rights of the many are sacrificed to promote the interest of the few ? The 
landed aristocracy have controlled the election of a majority of the members 
of the House of Commons ; and they, themselves, compose the House of 
Lords. The main scope and principal object of their legislation was to pro- 



FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS. 401 

mote the great landed interest, that of the large manufacturer?, and of the fund 
holders of a national debt, amounting to more than seven hundred and fifty- 
millions sterling. In order to accomplish these purposes, it became necessary 
to oppress the poor. Where is the country beneath the sun in which pauper- 
ism prevails to such a fearful extent ? Is it not known to the whole world 
that the wages both of agricultural and manufacturing labor are reduced to 
the very lowest point necessary to sustain human existence ? Look at Ireland, 
— the fairest land I have ever seen. Her laboring population is confined to 
the potatoe. Rarely, indeed, do they enjoy either the wheat or the beef 
which their country produces in such plentiful abundance. It is chiefly sent 
abroad for foreign consumption. 

The people of England are now struggling to make their institutions more 
free; and I trust in God they may succeed; yet their whole system is arti- 
ficial, and without breaking it down altogether, I do not perceive how the 
condition of the mass of the people can be much ameliorated. In the present 
state of the world, no friend of the human race ought probably to desire its 
immediate destruction. We ought to regard it rather as a beacon to warn us 
than as a model for our imitation. We ought never, like England, to raise up 
by legislation any great interests or monopolies to oppress the people, which 
we cannot put down without crushing the Government itself. Such is now 
the condition of that country. I am no admirer of the British constitution, 
either in church or state, as it at present exists. I desire not a splendid gov- 
ernment for this country. 

The Senator from Virginia has quoted with approbation, and sustained 
by argument, a sentiment from De Tocqueville to which I can never subscribe. 
It is this : That there is greater danger, under a Government like ours, that 
the Chief Magistrate may abuse his power, than under a limited monarchy ; 
because, being elected by the people, and their sympathies being strongly 
enlisted in his favor, he may go on to usurp the liberties of the country with 
their approbation. 

[Here Mr. Rives rose and explained.] 

Mr. Buchanan. From the gentleman's explaination, I find that I did not 
misquote either his proposition or his argument. I am sorry he speaks under 
the dominion of so much feeling. I have none at all on the present 
occasion. I shall proceed, and, at the proper time, and, I trust, in the proper 
manner, give my answer to this proposition. 

The Senator has introduced De Tocqueville as authority on this question ; 
and, in order to give greater weight and lustre to this authority, has pro- 
nounced him superior to Montesquieu. Montesquieu was a profound thinker, 
and almost every sentence of his is an apothegm of wisdom. He has stood, 
and ever will stand, the test of time. I cannot compare De Tocqueville with 
Montesquieu. I think he himself would blush at such a comparison. 

I may truly say chat I have never met any Frenchman or Englishman who 
could understand the complicated relations existing between our Federal and 
State Governments. In this respect, De Tocqueville has not succeeded much 
I.— 26 



403 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

better than the rest. I am disposed to quarrel with him for one thing, and 
that is, that he is opposed to the doctrines of the Virginia and Kentuclcy 
resolutions. He is one of those old Federalists, in the true acceptation of that 
term, who believe that the powers of the General Government are not 
sufficiently strong to protect it from the encroachment of the States. Hence 
one great object of his book is to prove tliat this Government is becom- 
ing weaker and weaker, whilst that of the States is growing stronger and 
stronger ; and although he does not think the time near, yet the final catastrophe 
must be, that it will be dissolved by its own weakness, and the people at 
length, tired of the perpetual struggles of liberty, will finally seek repose in 
the arms of despotism. This result, in his opinion, is not to be brought about 
by the strength, but by the weakness, of the Federal Government. I might 
adduce many quotations to this efiect from his book, but I shall trouble the 
Senate with but a few. He says, in summing up a long chapter on this sub- 
ject, " I am strangely mistaken if the Federal Government of the United 
States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public affairs, 
and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally feeble, but 
it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other hand, I 
thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more 
decided attachment to provincial government, in the States, The Union is to 
subsist, but to subsist as a shadow ; it is to be strong in certain cases, and 
weak in all others ; in time of warfare it is to be able to concentrate all the 
forces of the nation, and all the resources of the country in its hands; and in 
time of peace its existence is to be scarcely perceptible, as if this alternate 
debility and vigor were natural or possible." 

" I do not foresee anything for the present which may be able to check 
this general impulse of public opinion ; the causes in which it originated do 
not cease to operate with the same effect. The change will therefore go on, 
and it may be predicted that, unless some extraordinary event occurs, the 
Government of the Union will grow weaker and weaker every day." Again : 
" So far is the Federal Government from acquiring strength and from threat- 
ening the sovereignty of the States, as it grows older, that I maintain it to be 
growing weaker and Aveaker, and that the sovereignty of the Union alone is 
:n danger," And again: "It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when 
the Americans lose their Republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at 
a despotic government, without a long interval of hmited monarchy." 

Speaking of the power of the President, he says : " Hitherto no citizen 
has shown any disposition to expose his honor and his life, in order to become 
the President of the United States, because the power of that office is tem- 
porary, limited and subordinate. The prize of fortune must be great to encour- 
age adventurers in so desperate a game. No candidate has as yet been able 
to arouse the dangerous enthusiasm or the passionate sympathies of the peo- 
ple in his favor, for the very simple reason, that when he is at the head of the 
Government he has but little power, but little wealth, and but little glory to 
share amougst his friends ; and his influence in the State is too small for the 



FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS. 403 

success or the ruia of a faction to depend upon the elevation of an individual 
to power." 

Now, if this greater than Montesquieu is to be believed, and his authority 
is to be relied on by the Senator from Virginia, whence his terror and alarm 
lest the power of the President might be strengthened by the influence of the 
lower class of federal ofSce holders at elections? Why should they be 
deprived of the freedom of speech and of the press, upon the piinciple that 
the power of Mr. Van Buren is dangerous to the liberties of his country ? 
The gentleman's lauded authority is entirely against his own position. Now, 
for my own part, I differ altogether from De Tocqueville. Although I do not 
believe that the power and patronage of the President can with any, even the 
least, justice be compared with that of the King of England, yet from the 
very nature of things, from the rapid increase of our population, from the 
number of new States, from our growing revenue and expenditures, from the 
additional number of ofl&cers necessary to conduct the affairs of the Govern- 
ment, and from many other causes which I might enumerate, I am convinced 
that the Federal Executive is becoming stronger and stronger. Rest assured 
he is not that feeble thing which De Tocqueville represents him to be. Fed- 
eral power ought always to be watched with vigilant jealousy, not with unjust 
suspicion. It ought never to be extended by the creation of new offices, 
except they are absolutely necessary for the transaction of the public business. 
The "Whigs will be astonished to learn that, in the opinion of this author, 
General Jackson has greatly contributed, not to strengthen, but to weaken 
federal power. "Far from wishing to extend it," says he; "the President 
belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the bare and 
precise letter of the Constitution, and which never puts a construction upon 
that act favorable to the Government of the Union ; far from standing forth 
as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent of all the 
jealousies of the States ; and he was placed in the lofty situation he occupies 
by the passions of the people which are most opposed to the central Govern- 
ment." He states the means adopted by this illustrious man for destroying 
his own power. They are : 1. Putting down internal improvements. 
2. Abandoning the Indians to the legislative tyranny of the States. 3. De- 
sti-oying the Bank of the United States, 4. Yielding up the tariff as a sacri- 
fice to appease South Carolina. In this list, he mentions the abandonment by 
Congress of the proceeds of the sales of the public land to the new States to 
satisfy their importunity. These States will be astonished to learn that Mr. 
Clay's land bill, to which they were so violently opposed, gave them the 
greatest part of the revenue derived from this source ; and my friend from 
Missouri [Mr. Benton] will doubtless be much disappointed to hear that Pres- 
ident Jackson had completely adopted the principles of this bill. De Tocque- 
ville has communicated this information to us, and he is high authority. Hear 
him : " Congress," says he, " has gone on to sell, for the profit of the nation 
at large, the uncultivated lands which those new States contained. But the 
latter at length asserted that, as they were now fully constituted, they ought 



404 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

to enjoy the exclusive right of converting the produce of these sales to their 
own use. As their remonstrances became more and more threatening, Con- 
gress thought fit to deprive the Union of a portion of the privileges which it 
had hitherto enjoyed; and, at the end of 1832, it passed a law by which 
the greatest part of the revenue derived from the sale of lands was made over 
to the new western republics, although the lands themselves were not ceded 
to them." And, in a note to this passage, the author says : " It is true that 
the President refused his assent to this law ; but he completely ado^Dted it 
in principle. See message of 8tli December, 1833." 

Here, sir, is a fair sample of the information which passes current in 
Europe in regard to us and our institutions, and this proceeds from the modern 
Montesquieu ! Had he been a genuine Montesquieu, I thmk he would have 
said. General Jackson has strengthened the Federal Government by arresting 
it in its career of usurpation, and bringing it back to its ancient constitutional 
course. Thus all danger of collision, or even of jealousy, between it and the 
States has been avoided ; and within its appropriate sphere, every clog has 
been removed from its vigorous action. It has thus become more powerful. 
Love of the Union is a sentiment deeply seated ia the heart of every Ameri- 
can. It grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength; and 
never was it stronger than at the present moment. One great cause of this 
is, that General Jackson has denied himself every power not clearly granted 
by the Constitution ; whilst he has, with a firmness and energy pecuhar to 
himself, exerted all those which have been clearly conferred upon the General 
Government. But enough of this. 

Now, sir, I cannot agree with the Senator from Virginia, according to the 
explanation which he has given, that there is greater danger of usurpation by 
an elective President, than by a limited hereditary monarch. His was an 
argument to prove that, in this respect, a limited monarchy has the advantage 
over our Republican form of Government. If this be true, then our Govern- 
ment, in one particular at least, is worse than that of England. Now, sir, 
upon what argument does the gentleman predicate this conclusion ? Does he 
not perceive that it is upon an entire want of confidence in the people of the 
United States ? He fears their feehngs may become so enhsted in favor of 
some popular Chief Magistrate who has been elected by their suffrages — their 
passions may become so excited — that he may ride upon their backs into 
despotic power. Now, I do not believe any such thing. I feel the utmost 
confidence in the people. As long as they remain intelligent and virtuous, 
they will both be able and willing to defend their own cause, and protect 
their own liberties from the assaults of an asurper, whether they be open or 
disguised. Their passions will never drive them to commit suicide upon 
themselves. It is true the people may go wrong upon some questions. In 
my opinion, they have recently gone Avrong in some of the States ; but 1 
rely upon their sober second thought to correct the evil. On a question, 
however, between liberty and slavery, until they are fit to be slaves, there 
can be no danger. 



POWER OF THE FEDERAL EXECUTIVE. 4C5 

The Senator has expressed the opinion, with great confidence, that ours is 
a far stronger Executive Government than that of England ; and has sustained 
this opinion by an enuroeration of office holders, and an argument to vphich 
I shall not specially refer. Let any man institute a comparison between the 
two, and he will find that this is but the creation of a brilliant imagination. 
I got a friend in the library last evening to collect some statistical information 
for me on this subject. Even now, in the time of peace, the British army 
exceeds 101,000 men, including officers; and their vessels of war in commis- 
sion are one hundred and ninety-one. How will our army of 12,000 men, 
and our navy consisting of twenty-six vessels in commission, compare with 
this array of force, and this source of patronage ? The officers of the British 
army and navy, appointed by the crown, hold seats in Parliament, and engage 
actively in the business of electioneering. No law prohibits them from exert- 
ing their influence at elections ; and the bill of the Senator from Kentucky, 
in this respect, bears a close resemblance to the act of Parliament. No 
jealousy is manifested in either towards the higher officers. It is only those 
of the humble class who are deprived of their rights. 

On the 5th January, 1836, the public debt of Great Britain and Ireland 
amounted to £760,294,554 7s. 2|d. sterling, say, in round numbers, to thirty- 
six hundred mOlions of dollars. The interest of every man who owns any 
portion of this vast national debt is involved in and identified with tlie power 
of the British government. It is by the exertion of this power alone, that 
the annual interest upon his money can be collected from the people. In 
order to pay this interest and sustain the government, there was collected 
from the British people, in the form of customs and internal taxes, during the 
year ending on the 5th January, 1836, the sura of £52,589,992 4s. 6id. ster- 
ling ; say, in round numbers, two hundred and fifty-two miUions of dollars. 
What a vast field for patronage is here presented ! How does our revenue, 
of some twenty or twenty-five millions of dollars, compare with this aggre- 
gate ? Then there is the patronage attached to the East and West Indies, to 
the Canadas, and to British possessions scattered all over the earth. The 
government of England is a consolidated government. It is not like ours, 
composed of sovereign States, all whose domestic officers are appointed by 
State authority. The king is the exclusive fountain of office and of honors 
and of nobility throughout his vast dominions. What is the fact in regard to ' 
the General Government ? With the exception of post officers, its patronage 
is almost exclusively confined to the appointment of custom-house officers 
along our maritime frontier, and land officers near our western limits. 
Throughout the vast intermediate space, a man may grow old without ever 
seeing a federal civil officer, unless it be a postmaster. I adduce these facts 
for the purpose, not of proving that we ought not to exercise a wholesome 
jealousy towards the Federal Government, but for that of showing how 
unjust it is to compare the power and patronage of the President of the 
United States with that of the king of England. You might as well com- 



406 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

pare the twinkling of the most distant star in the firmament of heaven with 
the blaze of the meridian sun. May this ever continue to be the case I 

I will tell the Senator from Kentucky how far I am willing to proceed with 
him in punishing public officers. If a postmaster will abuse his franking 
privilege, as I know to my sorrow has been done in some instances, by con- 
verting it into the means of flooding the surrounding country, with base libels 
in the form of electioneering pamphlets and handbills, let such an officer be 
instantly dismissed and punished. If any district attorney should either favor 
or oppress debtors to Government, for the purpose of promoting the interest 
of his party, he ought to share a similar fate. So if a collector will grant 
privileges in the execution of his office to one importer, which he denies to 
another, in order to subserve the views of his party, he ought to be dismissed 
from office and punished for his offence. I would not tolerate any such official 
misconduct. But whilst a man faithfully and impartially discharges all the 
duties of his office, let him not be punished for expressing his opinion in 
regard to the merits or demerits of any candidate. Above all, let us not 
violate the Constitution, in order to punish an officer. 

The Senator from Virginia has of late appealed to us often to rise above 
mere party, and to go for our country. Such appeals are not calculated to 
produce any deep impression on my mind ; because, in supporting my party, 
I honestly believe I am, in the best manner, promoting the interest of my 
country. I am, but I trust not servilely, a party man. I support the present 
President, not because I think him the wisest or best man alive, but because 
he is the faithful and able representative of my principles. As long as he 
shall continue to maintain these principles, he shall receive ifly cordial support ; 
but not one moment longer. I do not oppose my friends on this side of the 
House because I entertain unkind feelings towards them personally. On the 
contrary, I esteem and respect many of them highly. It is against the politi- 
cal principles of which they are the exponents, that I make war. 

I support the President, because he is in favor of a strict and limited con- 
struction of the Constitution, according to the true spirit of the Virginia and 
Kentucky resolutions. I firmly believe that if this Government is to remain 
powerful and permanent, it can only be by never assuming doubtful powers, 
which must necessarily bring it into collision with the States. It is not diffi- 
cult to foresee what would be the termination of such a career of usurpation 
on the rights of the States. 

I oppose the Whig party, because, according to their reading of the Con- 
stitution, Congress possess, and they think ought to exercise, powers which 
Avould endanger the rights of the States and the liberties of the people. Such 
a free construction of the Constitution as can derive from the simple power 
" to lay and collect taxes," that of creating a National Bank, appears to me to 
be fraught with imminent danger to the country. I am opposed to the party 
so liberal in their construction of the Constitution, as to infer the existence of 
a power in the Federal Government to create and circulate a paper currency 
for the whole Union, from the clause which merely authorizes Congress " to 



DEVOTION OF THE FOLLOWERS OF JACKSON. 407 

regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, and 
with the Indian tribes." Such constructions would establish precedents which 
might call into existence other alien and sedition laws ; and it is such a con- 
struction which has given birth to the bill now before the Senate, denying the 
freedom of speech and of the press to a respectable portion of our citizens. 

Should the time ever arrive when these principles shall be carried into 
practice, and when the Federal Government shall control the whole paper 
system of the country, either by the agency of a National Bank, or an imme- 
diate issue of its own paper, our liberties will then be in the greatest danger. 
In addition to the constitutional patronage of the President, confer upon him 
the influence which would result from the establishment of a National Bank, 
and you may make him too powerful for the people. Such a bank, spreading 
its branches into every State, controlling all the State institutions, and able to 
destroy any of them at pleasure, would be a fearful engine of executive power. 
It would indissolubly connect the money power with the power of the Federal 
Government ; and such an union might, I fear, prove irresistible. The people 
of the States might still continue to exercise the right of suffrage ; all the 
forms of the Constitution might be preserved, and they might delude them- 
selves with the idea that they were yet free, whilst the moneyed influence had 
insinuated itself into the very vitals of the State, and was covertly controlling 
every election. 

Tlie personal attacliment wMcli bound to General Jackson 
the most distinguished men of his own party was compounded 
of something better than a sordid love of office. To them he 
was always " the old hero." He was their political chief, and 
to follow him was of the essence of patriotism. They might 
sometimes doubt the wisdom of his measures ; but they sur- 
rendered their own judgments to his, not, as their political 
adversaries charged, from a slavish fear, but because they re- 
garded him as a great man, honestly and resolutely bent on 
serving his country. They knew, as well as his opponents, that 
he had an imperious will. But they knew him better than 
opponents who never approached him, who held themselves 
aloof from all contact with his mind, and who formed their 
ideas of his character from the stories that told how illiterate 
he was ; how he never wrote his State papers ; how ignorant 
he was of constitutional law ; how he gave way to his passions, 
and swore "by the Eternal." In nothing was the devotion of 
the leading men of his party to Jackson more fervid, more 
constant, and more true to their sense of public duty than it 
was in his warfare against the bank. In the whole of that 



408 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

conflict, in its progress and in its close, a band of men, who 
numbered among them the strongest intellects of the party, 
stood by him without the smallest sign of flinching. Some 
defections there were, but the seceders were not persons of 
much importance. The great body of his strongest supporters 
shared in his triumphs over the bank, and to the end of their 
lives it was to them a victory over a monster, as worthy of 
everlasting commemoration as the victory of St. Michael over 
the dragon. 

In the opposite party convictions were not less strong, and 
in that party wei'e some of the foremost minds of the age. As 
a parliamentary leader, Mr. Clay has been equalled by no man 
in our political history. With a personal fascination and a 
persuasive eloquence, he united a temper as dictatorial as Jack- 
son's ; and if he had ever become President, he would, proba- 
bly, have been as tyrannical as he was accustomed to say and 
as many believed that Jackson was. The massive logic of 
Webster ; his profound knowledge of our constitutional system 
and of political history ; his full equipment in the accomplish- 
ments of a statesman ; his careful and comprehensive study of 
every public question on which he had to act ; his vast reputa- 
tion and his majestic presence made him a far more formidable 
adversary of the administration than Mr. Clay ever was. Clay 
had never rendered a service comparable to Webster's defence 
of the Constitution against the Nullitiers and his patriotic sup- 
port of General Jackson's measures in assertion of its authority. 
In all the political tactics of Mr. Clay — even in his " compro- 
mise tariif," by which he saved Mr. Calhoun and his followers 
from a great personal humiliation, and from a serious peril 
which they brought upon themselves — the public suspected, or 
believed that there might be reason to suspect, some personal 
motive. Webster, although as anxious to be President as Clay, 
although, like his great rival, ambitious in that lofty sense of 
ambition which consists in the desire to render eminent services 
to one's country in the highest attainable position, had more 
than once in the course of his public life given proof that he 
could rise above party or personal objects, and could support 
the measures of an administration when he approved of them, 
and yet refrain from going over to a party against whose course 



RIVALRY IN THE WHIG PARTY. 409 

in other respects he was bound by his convictions to exert his 
utmost resistance. 

Around each of these two prominent leaders of the Whig 
party was gathered a body of able men, who were so for united 
as the bond of thinking alike concerning the KepubHc can 
unite a political party, but who, in consequence of the rivalry 
between their respective chiefs, were never held together 
so compactly as their opponents, the followers of Jackson. 
Perhaps Mr. Clay was more fortunate in securing and holding 
the personal attachment of a larger number of political friends 
than Mr. Webster. Twice was Clay made the candidate of his 
party ; twice was he magnanimously and vigorously supported 
by Webster's powerful aid ; and twice he was defeated, the first 
time by Jackson, in 1832, and the second time by Polk, in 
1844. In the interim between these two elections, namely, in 
1836 and 1840, the Whig party, mainly in consequence of the un- 
reconciled claims of its two greatest statesmen, resorted to a can- 
didate who was personally and politically insignificant, but whom 
they succeeded in electing in 1 840 through the circumstances of the 
time. But at the period of General Jackson's second Presi- 
dency, the great A7hig opposition was firmly united against all 
his measures respecting the bank and the currency. It was a 
period when the leading men on all sides were governed by 
convictions to a very remarkable degree, notwithstanding the 
influence which the love of office or the desire for it exerted 
throughout the inferior ranks of politicians in both parties ; 
and among the Whigs the opinion which held the financial 
measures of General Jackson to be most injurious to the 
country, was not less strong and sincere than was the belief of 
his supporters, that the destruction of the bank M-as necessary 
to the public welfare. 

After Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate, he became conspic- 
uous among the defenders of Jackson's financial measures. His- 
tory, however fiiirly written, must leave it an undecided question, 
whether the evils and sufferings produced by Jackson's hostility 
to the bank were, in the long run, compensated by its destruc- 
tion, and by the establishment of the doctrine that such an 
institution must not be allowed to exist. To one generation at 
least they were not compensated. It was impossible that the 



410 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

connection between the Government and the bank should be 
severed, as it was severed by Jackson, and be followed by the 
measures to which he resorted, without causing a wide-spread 
financial disaster, the bankruptcy and ruin of thousands, and 
inextricable embarrassment to the Government itself. But it is 
sufficient for the present purpose to describe the situation in 
which Jackson left the alfairs of the country to his successor, 
and the troubles through which Mr. Yan Buren and his politi- 
cal friends had to grope their way towards a definite solution of 
the true relation between the Government of the United States 
and the currency. A short retrospect into the history of the 
bank will develop the principal grounds of General Jackson's 
hostility to it. 

There would seem to have been no reason, a priori, why 
the United States, if regarded simply as a nation, should not 
have a ISTational Bank, to perform the same kind of functions 
that have been performed by similar institutions in other 
countries. In the luminous report made by Alexander Hamil- 
ton in December, 1790, on a National Bank, he set forth, with 
his accustomed ability, the advantage of having one fiscal cor- 
poration, which could act as the depositary of the public funds, 
transfer them from place to place as they are wanted at far 
distant points, enable the Government to borrow money, and 
furnish, under proper safeguards, a paper circulation of equally 
recognized value and security throughout the Union, thus 
increasing the amount of money available for the uses of legiti- 
mate business, and the means of effecting exchanges.* That 
the Bank of the United States, chartered by Congress in 1816, 
had down to the year 1833 well fulfilled these functions, there 

* There is, perhaps, no other of the writings of Hamilton whicli more strikingly exhibits 
Mb marvellous powers, the perspicuity of his style, andhis faculty of illustrating an intricate 
subject, than this report. When he made it he was at the age of thirty-three. It reads as if 
he had passed a long life in some country where banks had been established for centuries, 
and in some oiKcial connection with them, or in mercantile pursuits that had brought him 
into daily experience of their operations ; yet lie had never been out of the United States 
since he came from the Island of St. Christopher, at the age of fifteen ; there had been but 
three banks in this country when he wrote this report ; and every part of his life that had 
not been passed in the army, in Congress, or in the proceedings to form and establish the 
Constitution of the United States, had been employed in the practice of the law. This 
master-piece of exposition may be read with delight by any person of taste, such are the 
grace, precision, force and completeness with which he handles his subject. We need not 
wonder that it carried conviction among the members of the body to which it was 
addressed. 



RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF THE BANK QUESTION. 411 

could be little doubt. But under the Constitution of the United 
States, which had established a government of enumerated and 
limited powers, there had always been a question whether Con- 
gress possessed authority to create such a liscal corporation. 

This question involved the fundamental rule of interpreta- 
tion that ought to be applied to the powers of the Constitution : 
— a rule on which statesmen had differed from the day of its 
inauguration, and which came to be the most important divid- 
ing line between political parties, as soon as parties were formed. 
The chief canon of interpretation that was acted upon by those 
who shaped the measures of Washington's administration, and 
to which the sanction of his great name was given by his sig- 
nature of the first charter of a national bank, was that the 
express and enumerated powers of the Constitution were de- 
scribed in general terms, for the accomplishment of certain 
great objects of national concern ; and that whatever particular 
powers are necessary as means to the full execution of the gen- 
eral powers described in the instrument, are to be rightfully 
regarded as having been granted to Congress, because they were 
included by an implication, without which the principal powers 
would be nugatory. This, it was contended, would have been 
a necessary and logical deduction, even if the Constitution itself 
had not contained a clause defining the scope of the legislative 
power of Congress, applicable to all the general powers enu- 
merated in the previous recitals. But with this clause, granting 
to Congress authority " to make all laws which shall be neces- 
sary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing 
powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the 
Government of the United States, or in any Department or of- 
ficer thereof," it was claimed that Congress had ample scope for 
a choice of means in the execution of every enumerated power 
granted by the Constitution. Hence arose the doctrine of what 
have been called " implied powers," namely, those powers of 
government which result by implication from the grant of 
authority over certain subjects, and which, from the nature of 
political sovereignty, may be employed in the accom])lishment 
of any object over wdiich that sovereignty extends. It was not 
denied that the means resorted to in the exercise of an implied 
power must have a relation, as a means, to one or more of the 



413 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

express powers of tlie Constitution as its end. By the '' strict 
constructionists," however, it was claimed, first, that the doc- 
trine of implied powers was too broad to be allowed to a gov- 
ernment of a special and. limited character ; secondly, that the 
Constitution itself did not grant an unlimited choice of means 
or instruments for the execution of its enumerated powers, but 
confined the choice to such as are " necessary and proper," terms 
that imported a restriction to those means which are indispens- 
able in fact to the attainment of the end. In reply, it was con- 
tended by the advocates of the doctrine of implied powers that 
the terms " necessary and proper" did not import that the par- 
ticular means employed should be so indispensable to the exe- 
cution of some granted authority that the authority could not 
be exercised without resorting to that means ; but that any 
means could be resorted to, which, in the exercise of a sound 
legislative discretion, might be found to be appropriate, con- 
venient and conducive to the end. Such, it was argued, was 
the relation between a bank and certain of the express powers 
of the Constitution. 

Satisfied by the powerful intellect and luminous pen of 
Hamilton that this was a correct construction of the Constitu- 
tion, "Washington, on the 25th of February, 1791, approved the 
bill which chartered the first Bank of the United States. The 
paper drawn up by Mr. Jefferson, on the same occasion, con- 
troverted the doctrine of implied powers with singular acute- 
ness, and embodied those stricter principles of constitutional 
interpretation for which the party that he afterwards founded, 
and that which claimed to be its political successors, have gen- 
erally contended. ■'•' 

The charter of the first Bank of the United States expired in 
the year 1811, and those who had originally opposed it then 
defeated a bill for its renewal. In 1814-15, during the admin- 
istration of Mr. Madison, while we were engaged in the war 
with England, it was supposed that the exigencies of the coun- 
try required a national bank. A bill to create one was passed 
by the two houses, in January, 1815, but it was " vetoed " by 
Mr. Madison, and was not passed over his veto. His objections 

* Works of Thomas Jefferson. 



RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF THE BA^'K QUESTION. 413 

related to the details of the charter. As to the constitutional 
power to create a national bank, he considered that the repeated 
acts of all branches of the Government and a concurrence of 
the general will of the nation, had settled the question, although 
his personal opinion was adverse to the power. But in 1816, a 
new charter, which incorporated the last Bank of the United 
States, was passed bj both houses and received the signature of 
Mr. Madison, This charter was limited to twenty years, and 
was consequently to expire in 1836.* In 1819 the question of 
its constitutional validity came before the Supreme Court of 
the United States, and the great mind of Chief Justice Mar- 
shall formulated in a judicial decision the doctrine of implied 
powers, and the bank was declared to be an instrument to 
which Congress could legitimately resort for the execution of 
certain of the powers enumerated in the Constitution.! 

AVhen President Jackson, in 1832, vetoed a bill for renewing 
the charter of the bank, it might, perhaps, have been wiser for 
him to have acquiesced, a3 Mr. Madison did, in the weight of 
authority and precedent on the question of constitutional 
power, esj^ecially since that weight had been greatly augmented 
by the decision of the Supreme Court. It was doubtless then, 
as it always must be, a delicate question whether a President is 
officially bound, in approving laws, by the opinion of the Judi- 
cial Department that such laws are constitutional. General 
Jackson considered that in his legislative capacity he was not 
so bound, but that while it was his duty to give due considera- 
tion to the reasoning on which the judicial decision rested, it 
was equally his duty to exercise his own judgment, upon a 
question of constitutional power, when asked to approve of a 
law. All his personal convictions, and the convictions of his 
official advisers, were adverse to the construction on which the 
constitutional validity of the bank charter depended ; and per- 
haps he and they, believing that the bank, with a large capital 
and with certain practical powers over the whole paper circula- 
tion of the country, had entered the political field in hostility to 
his administration, did not choose to forego the use of any 

* See the history of the various bills for creating a national bank stated more in detail 
in the Life of Mr. Webster, by the present writer, vol. I. 

t McColloush vs. the State of Maryland, 4 ^Tieaton's R. 316. 



414 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

weapon that could be wielded against it. Aside from his per- 
sonal interests as a candidate for re-election, it is but justice to 
believe that he honestly regarded the bank as a dangerous 
institution, and that he discerned, or thought he discerned, that 
the constitutional objection was the strongest club with which 
the Hydra could be assailed. In choosing this weapon, how- 
ever, as his principal reliance, he enabled his opponents to rep- 
resent him as a man who chose to set up his own arbitrary will 
against the judgment of two Congresses, two Presidents of great 
authority, the Supreme Court of the United States and the gen- 
eral acquiescence of the nation for a period of twenty years, on 
a question of constitutional construction. Had he placed his 
veto upon the renewal of its charter on grounds of expediency 
alone, the bank might have been compelled to wind up its con- 
cerns in a manner that would have produced less mischievous 
consequences to the country than those which ensued. 

His next step, the removal from the bank of the public 
deposits, in the summer of 1833, followed by his selection of 
certain State banks as the keepers of the public money, and, to 
a certain extent, as the fiscal agents of the Government, led to a 
singular train of evils. Doubtless an institution, whose legal 
existence was to expire in three years, and which could not 
obtain from Congress a prolongation of its charter without 
using its power as a moneyed corporation to affect the politics 
of the country, had by this time become an unfit custodian of 
the public funds. Still, there was no sufficient warrant of law 
for placing the public funds in the custody of State banks, at 
the time when they were so transferred, nor had any system 
been matured by the executive for the consideration of Con- 
gress, which might furnish a substitute for that which had been 
in operation so long. The selection of certain State banks as 
the depositaries of the public money, was a tentative experi- 
ment, through which the country had to pass, with various 
disasters, before any safe and eflicient substitute could be 
found. 

The immediate effect of the withdrawal of the Government 
fnnds from the Bank of the United States, was a diminution of 
its loans and a consequent contraction of the currency. The 
immediate efi'ect of placing those funds in a few selected State 



RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF THE BANK QUESTION. 415 

banks, was a wild speculation bj their managers and other 
favored individuals, leading to their ruin. The assembling of 
Congress in December, 1833, was followed by Mr. Clay's attack 
upon the President, and a session through which the Senate 
Avas constantly engaged in the discussion of questions growing 
out of the situation in which the Government, the country, the 
l>ank of the United States and the State banks had been 
placed by the executive. At length the Whigs forced from the 
friends of the administration a disclosure of the President's 
purpose to keep the public moneys in the State banks, to collect 
the public revenues through their agency, not to have any 
present legislation on the subject, and not to allow another 
national bank of any kind to be created. The adoption of Mr. 
Clay's resolutions censuring the President w- as followed, on the 
17th of April, 1831:, by the President's Protest, a document of 
singular ability and dignity, setting forth his views of the 
executive authority over all public officers, including the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, in relation to the custody of the public 
funds. The Whig majority of the Senate recorded their rejec- 
tion of these doctrines ; but as the administration held a 
majority in the House of Representatives, the session termi- 
nated without any legislation to control in any Avay the finan- 
cial experiment which the President had determined should be 
tried. 

In the session which began in December, 1834, w^hen Mr. 
Buchanan entered the Senate, the Whig majority was still 
unchanged, but it was destined to be overthrown by the effect 
of General Jackson's constantly increasing popularity and 
influence, which his conduct of the foreign relations of the 
country greatly tended to strengthen, while in domestic affairs a 
majority of the people, although beginning to suffer from his 
measures, still approved of his course in regard to the national 
bank. Nothing was done, however, at this session, to develope 
a more definite relation of the Government to the currency ; it 
was a session in which both parties were much occupied with 
the selection of candidates for the Presidency. The result was, 
that with the aid of General Jackson's powerful influence, 
Mr. Yan Buren became the Democratic candidate. In the 
autumn of 1836, he was elected by a majority of forty-six 



416 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

electoral votes, against General Harrison, the candidate of tlie 
Whigs.* 

The last of the executive measures of General Jackson, in 
relation to the finances and monetary affairs of the country, 
was the so-called " Specie Circular," issued by the Secretary 
of the Treasury on the 11th of July, 1836. It directed that 
after a certain period, nothing but gold and silver should be 
received at the land offices in payment for the public lands. 
The purpose of this measure was to prevent payment for the 
public lands in the depreciated paper of the State banks. But in 
the actual condition of things, its effect was to draw the specie 
of the country into the vaults of the deposit banks, through the 
land offices ; and as there was then no efficient means by which 
the Government could transfer its funds from place to place, as 
they were wanted, by any paper representative of money of 
equal credit through the Union, specie had to be moved to and 
fro in masses. The State banks which were not depositaries of 
the Government funds were thus weakened by the want of 
specie ; they had to curtail their loans, and a great scarcity of 
money ensued in many quarters. Before Congress assembled 
in December the internal exchanges of the country were entirely 
deranged, and a general suspension of specie payments by the 
banks was not unlikely to take place in the not distant future. 

It is not improbable that at this juncture the disasters which 
ensued in the next year might have been averted, if the politi- 
cal opponents of the administration on the one hand and its 
friends on the other could, by mutual concessions, have found 
a common ground of action. To remove the obnoxious Specie 

* At the time of the election of Mr. Van Buren, the whole number of electoral votes 
was 294, a majority being 148. There was no choice of a Vice President by the electoral 
colleges. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, received 14" votes, and was afterwards elected 
Vice President by the Senate. General Harrison, the leading Whig candidate for the Presi- 
dency, received the electoral votes of Vermont, New Jersey, Delav/are, Maryland, Kentucky, 
Ohio and Indiana, seventy-three in all. The fourteen votes of Massachusetts were given 
to Mr. Webster. Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, received the votes of Tennessee and of 
Georgia, twenty-six in all. The votes of South Carolina, eleven, were given to W. P. Man- 
gum, of North Carolina. It Is apparent, therefore, that at this time the Whigs, if we com- 
prehend in that term all the opponents of the Democratic party, were in a decided minority 
in the country at large. This was partly because their leading candidate was far inferior to 
the important men of the opposition ; but it was chiefly because the great States of New 
York, Pennsylvania and Virginia still adhered to the financial and other measures of General 
Jackson, and because so many of the smaller States were still indisposed to return to the 
policy of a national bank. 



GREAT FINANCIAL DISASTERS. 417 

Circular was evidently necessary. A bill was passed for tliis 
purpose by the two houses, before the end of the session, but at 
so late a period that the President did not return it, and it 
failed to become a law. The two opposing parties might have 
agreed on some provision for the necessities of the Government 
and the wants of the people, — some mode of providing a regu- 
lator of the paper currency, — but for two great obstacles which 
kept them apart, the one of which was to a great extent the 
consequence of the other. In the large commercial cities, the 
principal merchants and bankers were still in favor of the estab- 
lishment of a national bank, as the true remedy for existing 
disorders, and thence these classes almost universally acted with 
the Whigs. General Jackson had resolutely determined that 
no such institution should ever again be allowed to exist. Al- 
though, by the first use which he made of banking corporations 
in the fiscal concerns of the Government, he seemed to admit 
the power of the Government to create such corporations, his 
hostility to a national bank led him and liis political friends to 
seek for the means of divorcing the fiscal concerns of the Gov- 
ernment from all connection with banks of any kind, and to 
deny that the Government of the United States had any duty 
to perform towards the paper currency, or to provide any cur- 
rency but gold and silver. Had not the question of a national 
bank, in consequence of the attitude of so many of the Whigs, 
entered largely into the issues of the approaching Presidential 
election, it is not improbable that the two parties, in the session 
of 1836-7, might have discovered and carried out some means of 
averting the catastrophe which followed the election. But the 
result was that General Jackson turned over the Government 
to his successor on the 4th of March, 1837, without anything 
having been done for the remedy of existing disorders, and with 
an imperative necessity for an extra session of Congress. It 
was summoned by Mr. Yan Buren for the 4th of September, 
1837. Before that day arrived, every bank in the country had 
ceased to pay specie. 
1,-27 



CHAPTER XY. 

1837— 1841. 

MB. TAN BUREM's PRESIDENCY — THE FINANCIAL TROUBLES ACCUMULAT- 
ING — REMEDY OF THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY — BUCmVNAN ON THE 
CAUSES OF SPECIE SUSPENSION, AND THE PENTfSYLVANIA BANK OF 
THE UNITED STATES — GREAT POLITICAL REVOLUTION OP 1840 — 
BUCHANAN DECLINES A SEAT IN MR. VAN BUREN's CABINET. 

IN the condition of tilings existing wlien the extra session 
of Congress, summoned by Mr. Yan Biiren, commenced 
(September, 1837), the immediate relief of the Government 
■was the first necessity. The temporaiy expedient contemplated 
by the new administration, for this purpose, was to issue Treas- 
ury notes, to be used in paying the public creditors. For the 
permanent management of the public iinanees, it was proposed 
to make no further use of banks, but that the revenues of the 
Government should be deposited with certain officers of the 
Treasury, and be paid out to the public creditors on Treasury 
orders. This was the scheme which became afterwards ex- 
panded into the '"Sub-Treasury." It was examined and 
opposed by Mr, Webster, in an elaborate speech, delivered on 
the 2Sth of September, and on the 20th he was followed by 
Mr. Buchanan, in an equally extended and forcible discussion 
of the causes of the present distress, and the remedy that should 
be applied. These two speeches may be said to have exhausted 
the two sides of the main controverey between the opposite 
parties, in regard to the duty of the General Government to 
regulate the paper currency of the country, which then consisted 
of the notes of about eight hundred State banks. Such a dis- 
cussion of course involved the disputed topics of those clauses 
of the Constitution from which the Whigs derived the power 
and deduced the duty of a general supervision over the paper 
circulation. Of Mr. Buchanan's reasoning on these subjects, 



MR. VAN BUREN'S MESSAGE. 419 

it may be said witli justice that, entering into direct controversy 
with Mr. Webster, he combated that eminent person's constitu- 
tional views with singular ability, and energetically defended 
what was derisively called "the new experiment," and was 
considered by the party of the administration as a divorce of 
the Government from all connection with banks. In conclusion 
he said : , 

Mr. Van Buren is not only correct in his statements of facts, bvit by his 
message be has for ever put to flight the charge of non-committalism— of 
want of decision and energy. He has assumed an attitude of moral grandeur 
before the American people, and has shown himself worthy to succeed Gen- 
eral Jackson. He has elevated liimself much in my own esteem. He has 
proved equal to the trying occasion. Even his political enemies, who cannot 
approve the doctrines of the message, admire its decided tone, and the ability 
with which it sustains what has been called the new experiment. And why 
should the sound of new experiments in Government grate so harshly upon 
the ears of the Senator from Massachusetts ? Was not our Government 
itself, at its origin, a new and glorious experiment? Is it not now upon its 
trial? If it should continue to work as it has heretofore done, it will at least 
secure liberty to the human race, and rescue the rights of man, in every clime, 
from the grasp of tyrants. Still, it is, as yet, but an experiment. For its 
future success, it must depend upon the patriotism and the wisdom of the 
American people, and the Government of their choice. I sincerely believe 
that the establishment of the agencies which the bill proposes, will exert a 
most happy influence upon the success of our grand experiment, and that it 
will contribute, in no small degree, to the prosperous working of our institu- 
tions generally. The message will constitute the touchstone of political parties 
in this country for years to come; and I shall always be found ready to do 
battle in support of its doctrines, because their direct tendency is to keep the 
Federal Government within its proper limits, and to maintain the reserved 
lights of the States. To take care of our own money, through the agency 
of our own officers, without the employment of any banks, whether State or 
National, will, in my opinion, greatly contribute to these happy results ; and 
in sustaining this policy, I feel confident I am advocating the true interest and 
the dearest riglits of the people. 

This allusion to the decision and energy which Mr. Van 
Buren had displayed in his message at the opening of the extra 
session, and which had raised him in Mr. Buchanan's esteem, 
implies that Mr. Buchanan had previously doubted about the 
course of the new President. The following letters from Gen- 
eral Jackson show that he did not share those doubts. 



420 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[general JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Hermitage, August 24, 1837. 
My Dear Sir: — 

Your much-esteemed favor of date July 28th last, has been too Ion"- 
neglected by me. It reached me in due course of mail and I intended replying 
to it immediately, but checkered health and a crowd of company interposed 
and prevented me that pleasure until now. 

For your kind wishes, I tender you my sincere thanks — as to my fame, I 
rest it with my fellow-citizens — in their hands it is safe — posterity will do me 
justice. 

The vile slanders that are heaped upon me by the calumniators of the day 
pass unheeded by me, and I trust wCl fall harmless at my feet. 

What pleasure it affords to learn from you that the Keystone State of the 
Union are firmly united in the great Republican cause which now agitates the 
whole Union. This will give impulse throughout the Union to the Demo- 
cratic cause, and the conflict now raging between the aristocracy of the few, 
aided by the banks and the paper-money credit system, against the democracy 
of numbers, will give a glorious triumph to Eepublican principles throughout 
our Union, and good old Republican Pennsylvania will be again hailed, as she 
deserves, the Keystone to our Republican arch and preserver of our glorious 
Union. I feel proud of her attitude, and my fervent prayers are that nothing 
may again occur to separate the Republican ranks, so as to give to the opposi- 
tion or shinplaster party the ascendency. I feel to that State a debt of grati- 
tude which I will cherish to my grave, and I shall ever delight in her pros- 
perity. 

I have no fears of the firmness of Mr. Yan Buren ; his message you will 
find, or my disappointment will be great, will meet the views and wishes of 
the great Democratic family of Pennsylvania ; at present a temporizing policy 
would destroy him ; I never knew it fail in destroying all who have adopted 
it. My motto is, to take principle for my guide to the public good. I have 
full confidence that Mr. Yan Buren will adopt the same rule for his guide and 
all will be safe. 

I have always opposed a union between Church and State. From the late 
combined treachery of the banks, in suspending specie payments in open 
violation of their charters and every honest and moral principle, and for the 
corrupt objects they must, from their acts, have had in view, I now think a 
union between banks and the Government is as dangerous as a union with 
the Church, and what condition would we now be in if engaged in a war with 
England? I trust Congress will keep this in view, and never permit the 
revenue of our country to be deposited with any but their own agents ; it is 
collected by the agents of the Government, and why can it not be as safely 
kept and disbursed by her own agents under proper rules and restrictions by 
law ? I can see none, nor can it add one grain of power to the executive 
branch more than it possesses at present ; the agent can have as secure a 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL JACKSON. 42I 

deposit as any bank, and always at command by the Government to meet the 
appropriations by law; the revenue reduced to the wants of the Government 
never can be hoarded up, for as it comes in to-day, it will be disbursed to- 
morrow ; and if all cash, no credits, will be more in favor of our home indus- 
try than all tariffs. This I hope will be recommended by the President and 
adopted by Congress, and then I will hail our Republic safe, and our Repub- 
lican institutions permanent. 

You will please pardon these hasty and crude hints. My fomily join me 
in kind salutations, and beheve me your friend, 

Andrew Jackson. 

P. S. — Please let me occasionally hear from you. A. J. 

[jACKSON TO BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Hermitage, December 26, 1837. 

My Dear Sir: — 

I have to offer you an apology for my neglect of not acknowledging sooner 
your kind and interesting letter of the 26th of October last, accompanied 
with yours and Mr. Wright's speeches on the subject of the divorce bill or 
sub-treasury system. 

I have read these speeches with great attention and much pleasure ; they 
give conclusive evidence of thorough knowledge of our Republican system 
and constitutional law, and must remain a lasting monument of the talents 
that made them, and they will become the text-book of the Republicans for 
all time to come. I regret very much that these speeches have not been more 
generally circulated through the South and West ; they would have produced 
much good by enlightening the public mind. 

I never for one moment distrusted the firmness of Mr. Van Buren, and I 
rejoice to see this confidence confirmed by his undeviating course. I have no 
fears of the Republic. The political tornado that has lately spread over the 
State of New York must have a vivifying effect upon the Republican cause. 
-It will open the eyes of the people to the apostacy of the Conservatives, and 
prevent them from having the power to deceive hereafter, and will unite the 
Republicans from Maine to New Orleans.* 

It has (with the exultations of the Whigs here and Mr. Bell's speech at 
Fanueil Hall) had a healing effect in Tennessee. The deluded White men are 
just awakening from their delusion, and now say, although they supported 
White, they can neither go for Webster nor Clay ; that they have always been 
Republicans. The election of Mr. Foster instead of Bell to the Senate shows 
that Bell's popularity with the legislature is gone ; and I am informed that the 
majority of the legislature regret the premature election of the Senator, I have 

* The persons here referred to as " Conservatives," were a class of Democrats or Repub- 
licans, who stood aloof for a time from their party. 



432 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

no doubt but our next legislature will reverse the election of Senator, upon 
constitutional grounds ; that there was no vacancy to fill, and none that could 
happen within the time for which the present legislature was elected to serve. 
I hope the whole of the Eepublicans in Congress will rally with energy and 
firmness, and pass the divorce or sub-treasury bill into a law ; there is no doubt 
of the fact that in the Senate the Republicans have a vast superiority in the 
aro-ument; would to God we bad equal talent in the House of Representatives. 
The great body of the people will support this measure, and the Conservatives 
will have to return to the Republican fold, or join the opposition; if they join 
the opposition, they then become harmless, and can no longer delude the 
people by their hypocrisy and apostacy. I am informed by a gentleman from 
"Western Virginia, that Mr. Rives has, by his attitude, lost his political 
standing there, and Mr. Ritchie has lost his. I sincerely regret the attitude 
these two gentlemen have placed themselves in ; common sense plainly proves 
that if the revenue is again placed in irresponsible State banks, after their late 
treachery and faithlessness to the Government, it will inevitably lead at last to 
the incorporation of a national bank. Can any patriot again place our revenue, 
on which depends our independence and safety in time of war, in the keeping 
of State or any other banks, over whom the Government have no control, and 
when the revenue might be most wanted to provide for defence, the banks 
might suspend, and compel the Government to make a dishonorable peace ? I 
answer, no true patriot can advocate such a system, whatever might be his 
professions. 

I am proud to see that the Keystone State is preparing for the struggle 
next October. I hope nothing may occur in the least to divide the Repub- 
lican party ; the opposition and some professed friends, but real apostates and 
hirelings of banks, will endeavor to divide the party, but I hope and trust 
union and harmony will prevail. 

My health is improved, but my vision has failed me much ; I hope it may 
improve. I write with great difficulty. My whole household joins me in kind 
regards and good wishes for your happiness. I will be happy to hear from 
you the prospects of the divorce passing in the Court House. 

Your friend sincerely, 

Andrew Jackson. 
p.S. — We all present you with the joys of the season. 

The bill to authorize the issue of treasury notes was passed 
at the extra session of Congress in 1836. The bill to establish 
the sub-treasury was passed in the Senate but failed in the 
House. The Bank of the United States, unable to obtain from 
Congress a prolongation of its charter, had procured a charter 
of incorporation from the Legislature of Pennsylvania. This 
new corporation became the assignee of the assets of the old 
one. It was now, therefore, in a singular and unprecedented 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 433 

attitude. As a Pennsylvania coqjoration, it had power to issue 
its own notes. As a trustee for winding up the affairs of the 
old corporation, it had in its possession the notes of the old 
bank. It re-issued these notes, without any authority to do so, 
used them in the Southern States, in exchange for the depre- 
ciated local currency, with which it bought cotton for exportation, 
or to pay its debts abroad, or purchased specie to replenish its 
vaults at home. It had thus created an obstacle to the resump- 
tion of specie payments. On the 23d of April, 1S3S, Mr. 
Buchanan made a very able speech in the Senate, in support 
of a bill to prevent the Pennsylvania Bank from re-issuing and 
circulating the notes of the old bank, giving the causes which 
produced the suspension of specie payments, and those which 
might affect a resumption. 

Mr. Buchanan said there was but one consideration which could induce 
him, at the present moment, to take any part in the discussion of the bill now 
before the Senate. He felt it to be his duty to defend the legislature of the 
State which he had, in part, the honor to represent, from the charge which 
had been made against them by the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. AVall] and 
other Senators, and by many of the public presses throughout the country, 
that, in recbartering the Bank of the United States, they had conferred upon 
it the powers of a great trading company. This charge was wholly unfounded 
in point of fact. The charter had not constituted it a trading company ; and 
he felt himself bound to make the most solemn and public denial of that 
charge. If this bank had become the great cotton merchant which was rep- 
resented, and he did not doubt the fact, it had acted in express violation of its 
charter. He therefore rose, not to criminate, but to defend the legislature 
of his native State. 

The Democratic party of Pennsylvania had been, unfortunately, divided in 
1835 ; and the consequence was the recharter of the Bank of the United 
States. Of the wisdom or policy of this measure (said Mr. B.) the Senate of 
the United States are not constituted the judges. I shall never discuss that 
question here. This is not the proper forum. I shall leave it to the sover- 
eign people of the State. To them, and to them alone, are their representa- 
tives directly responsible for this recharter of the bank. As a citizen of the 
State, I have on all suitable occasions, both in public and in private, expressed 
my opinion boldly and freely upon the subject. In a letter from this city, 
dated on the 30th June, 1836, which was published throughout the State, I 
have presented my views in detail upon this question ; and I feel no disposi- 
tion to retract or recant a single sentiment which I then expressed. On the 
contrary, experience has only served to confirm my first convictions. 

My task is now much more agreeable. It is that of defending the very 



424 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

legislature who renewed the charter of the bank, from the charge which has 
been made and reiterated over and over again, here and throughout the 
country, of having created a vast corporation, with power to deal in cotton, 
or any other article of merchandise. A mere reference to the charter, will, 
of itself, establish my position. It leaves no room for argument or doubt. 
The rule of common reason, as well as of common law, is, that a corporation 
can exercise no power, except what has been expressly granted by its char- 
ter. The exercise of any other power is a mere naked usurpation. On the 
present occasion, however, I need not resort to this rule. The charter not 
only confers no such power of trading, but it contains an express prohibition 
against it. It was approved by the Governor on the 18th day of February, 
1836, and the fifth fundamental article contains the following provision : 
" Tlie said corporation shall not, directly or indirectly, deal or trade in any 
thing except hills of exchange, gold and silver bullion, or in the sale of goods 
really and tridy pledged for money lent and not redeemed in due time, or goods 
which shall he the proceeds of its lands." In this particular, it is but a mere 
transcript from the charter granted to the late bank by Congress on the 10th 
of April, 1816, which was itself copied from the charter of the first Bank of 
the United States, established in the year 1791. I have not recently had an 
opportunity of examining the charter of the Bank of England, but I believe 
it contains a similar provision. The Senate will, therefore, at once perceive 
there is as little foundation for charging the legislature of Pennsylvania with 
conferring upon the existing bank the enormous powers of a great trading 
company, as there would have been for making a similar charge against the 
first or the last Congress which chartered a Bank of the United States. It is 
true that the bank, ulider its existing charter, can deal much more extensively 
in stocks than it could have done formerly; but this power does not touch the 
present question. 

The bank, by becoming a merchant and dealing in cotton, has clearly vio- 
lated its charter, and that, too, in a most essential particular. Either the leg- 
islature or the Governor may direct a scire facias to issue against it for this 
cause; and, if the fact be found by a jury, the Supreme Court of the State 
can exercise no discretion on the subject, but must, under the express terms 
of the act creating it, adjudge its charter to be forfeited and annulled. 
Whether the legislature or the Governor shall pursue this course, is for them, 
not for me, to decide. This bank has already so completely entwined itself 
around our system of internal improvements and common school education, 
that it doubtless believes it may violate its charter with impunity. Be this as 
it may, the sin of speculating in cotton lies at the door of the bank, and not 
at that of the legislature. 

Heaven knows the legislature have been sufficiently liberal in conferring 
powers upon this institution ; but I doubt whether a single member of 
that body would have voted to create a trading company, with a capital of 
$35,000,000, in union with banking privileges. Let us pause and reflect for 
a moment upon the nature and consequences of these combined powers. A 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 425 

bank of discount and circulation, with such an enormous capital, and a trading 
company united! By expanding or contracting its discounts and circulation, 
as a bank, it can render money plenty or money scarce, at its pleasure. It 
can thus raise or depress the price of cotton, or any other article, and make 
the market to suit its speculating purposes. The more derangement that 
exists in the domestic exchanges of the country, the larger will be its profits. 
The period of a suspension of specie payments is its best harvest, during 
which it can amass millions. It is clearly the interest of this bank, whatever 
may be its inclination, that specie payments should continue suspended, and 
the domestic exchanges should continue deranged as long as possible. The 
ruin of the country thus becomes its most abundant source of profit. Accord- 
ingly, what do we find to have been its course of policy ? I have heard it 
described by several gentleman from the South and Southwest, some of 
whom are members of this body. It has gone into that region of the Union 
with these resurrection notes of the old bank, the reissue of which this bill 
proposes to prohibit ; and, in some States, it has exchanged them, the one- 
half for the depreciated local currency, and the other half for specie. With 
this local currency it has purchased cotton, and sent it to England for the 
purpose of paying its debts there, whilst with the specie it has replenished its 
vaults at home. In other States it has exchanged these dead notes of the old 
bank for the notes of the local banks, receiving a large premium on the trans- 
action, and with the latter has purchased cotton on speculation. A general 
resumption of specie payments would at once put an end to this profitable 
traffic. It has, then, first violated the charter from Congress by reissuing the 
notes of the old bank, and then violating the charter from Pennsylvania by 
speculating in cotton. During the suspension of specie payments, these notes 
have been the only universal paper circulation throughout the country ; and 
thus, by reissuing them, in defiance of the law, the present bank has been 
enabled to accumulate extravagant profits. 

This charge against the bank of speculating in cotton has never, to my 
knowledge, been contradicted. We have heard it from the other side of the 
Atlantic, as well as from the South and Southwest. The Whig press of our 
country has commended, nay, almost glorified the bank for going into the 
cotton market, when that article was depressed, and making large purchases, 
and its friends in England have echoed these notes of praise. Its example 
has produced a new era in banking. We find that the Southern and South- 
western banks have also become cotton merchants ; and, from present appear- 
ances, the trade in this great staple of our country is no longer to be con- 
ducted by private merchants, but by banking corporations. 

Under this system, what will be the fate of your private merchants ? This 
practice must be arrested, or they must all be ruined. The one or the other 
alternative is inevitable. What private individual can enter the cotton mar- 
ket in competition with the banks of the country ? Individual enterprise can 
accomplish nothing in such a struggle. It would be the spear hurled by the 
feeble hand of the aged Priam, which scarce reached the buckler of the son of 



426 LIFE OF JAMES BrCHANAN. 

Achilles. The Bauk of the United States which, according to the testimony 
of its president, might have destroyed, by an exertion of its power, almost 
every bauk in the country, could, with much greater ease, destroy any private 
merchant who might dare to interfere with its speculations. Such a contest 
would be that of Hercules contending against an infant. It can acquire a 
mouopol}' against individual merchants in any branch of mercantile business in 
which it may engage ; and, after having prostrated all competition, it can 
then regulate the price of any article of commerce according to its pleasure. 
I do not say that such is either its wish or its mtention ; but I mean thus to 
illustrate the vast and dangerous power which it may exercise as a merchant. 
The East India company monopolized the trade of Asia, but it possessed no 
banking powers. It could not, therefore, by curtailing or expanding its 
issues, make money scarce or make money plenty at pleasure, and thereby 
raise or depress the price of the articles in which it traded. In this respect 
its power as a merchant was interior to that now exercised by the Bank of 
the United States. 

How vain, tlien, I might almost s;iy how ridiculous, is it for people of the 
South to make the attempt to establish merchants in the southern seaports 
for the purpose of conducting a direct trade with Europe in cotton and other 
articles of their production, in opposition to the Bank of the United States and 
their own local banks. This effort must fail, or the banks must cease to be 
merchants. I am glad to learn that, at the late Southern convention, this 
alarming usurpation by the banks of the appropriate business of the merchant 
has been viewed in its proper light. The time, I trust, is not far distant 
when the)- will be confined, by public opinion, to their appropriate sphere. 
What a fatal error it is for any free people, tempted by present and partial 
gain, to encourage and foster such institutions in a course which must, if pur- 
sued, inevitably crush the merchants of the country who conduct its foreign 
trade ! As a class, these merchants are highly meritorious, and entitled to 
our support and protection against a power which, if suflered to be exerted, 
must inevitably destroy them. 

Philadelphia is a city devoted to the interests of the bank ; but even in 
that city, if it should undertake to speculate in flour, in coal, or in any other 
article which is poured into her market from the rich abundance of the State, 
such conduct would not be submitted to for a moment. The legislature of 
tlie State would at once interpose to protect our merchants. Such an attempt 
would at once break the spell of bank intluence. And yet it possesses no more 
power to deal in southern cotton than it docs in Pennsylvania flour. It will 
remain a banker at home ; whilst its mercantile speculations will be confined 
to the southern and southwestern provinces of its empire. 

The reason will now, I think, appear manifest why the Parliament of Great 
Britain, the Congress of the United States, and the Legislature of Pennsylva- 
nia, have so strictly prohibited their banking institutions from dealing in any 
tiling except bills of exchange and gold and silver bullion. If the Bank of 
England should dare to invade the province of the merchants and manutactu- 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 427 

rers of that country in a similar manner, the attempt would instantly be put 
down. Every man acquainted with the history and character of the people 
of England, know.s that such would be the inevitable consequence. And yet 
this violation of law, on the part of the Bank of the United States, has been 
lauded in our free Itepublic. 

As I am upon the floor, I shall proceed briefly to discuss the merits of the 
bill now before the Senate. It proposes to inflict a fine not exceeding ten 
thousand dollars, or imprisonment not less than one nor more than five years, 
or both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court, upon those 
who shall be convicted under its provisions. Against whom does it denounce 
these penalties ? Against directors, oflJcers, trustees, or agents of any cor- 
poration created by Congress, who, after its term of existence is ended, shall 
reissue the dead notes of the defunct corporation, and push them into the 
circulation of the country, in violation of its original c?iarter. The bill 
embraces no person, acts upon no person, interferes with no person, except 
those whose duty it is, under the charter of the old bank, to redeem and 
cancel the old notes as they are presented for payment, and who, in violation 
of this duty, send them again into circulation. 

This bill inflicts severe penalties, and, before we pass it, we ought to be 
entirely satisfied, first, that the guilt of the individuals who sliall violate its 
provisions is sufficiently aggravated to justify the punishment; second, that 
the law will be politic in itself; and, third, tliat we possess the constitutional 
power to enact it. 

First, then, as to the nature and aggravation of the offence. The charter 
of the late Bank of the United States expired, by its own limitation, on the 
3d of March, 1836. After that day, it could issue no notes, discount no new 
paper, and exercise none of the usual functions of a bank. For two years 
thereafter, until the 3d of March, 1838, it was merely permitted to use its 
corporate name and capacity " for the purpose of suits for the final settlement 
and liquidation of the affairs and accounts of the corporation, and for the sale 
and disposition of their estate, real, personal, and mixed; hut not for any 
other purpose^ or in any other manner, whatsoever !' Congress had granted 
the bank no power to make a voluntary assignment of its property to any 
corporation or any individual. On the contrary, the plain meaning of the 
charter was, that all the affairs of the institution should be wound up by its 
own president and directors. It received no authority to delegate this impor- 
tant trust to others ; and yet what has it done ? On the 2d day of March, 
1836, one day before the charter had expired, this very president and these 
directors assigned all the property and effects of the old corporation to the 
Pennsylvania Bank of the United States. On this same day, this latter bank 
accepted the assignment, and agreed to " pay, satisfy and discharge all debts, 
contracts, and engagements, owing, entered into, or made by this [the old] 
bank, as the same shall become due and payable, and fulfil awl execute all 
trusts and obligations whatsoever arising frora its transactions, or from any of 
them, so that every creditor or rightful claimant shall be fully satisfied." By 



428 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

its own agreement, it has thus expressl}'^ created itself a trustee of the old 
bank. But this was not necessary to confer upon it that character. By the 
bare act of accepting the assignment, it became responsible, under the laws of 
the land, for the performance of all the duties and trusts required by the old 
charter. Under the circumstances, it cannot make the slightest pretence of 
want of notice. 

Having assumed this responsibility, the duty of the new bank was so plain 
that it could not have been mistaken. It had a double character to sustain. 
Under the charter from Pennsylvania, it became a new banking corpora- 
tion ; whilst, under the assignment from the old bank, it became a trustee to 
wind up the concerns of that institution. These two characters were in their 
nature separate and distinct, and never ought to have been blended. For 
each of these purposes it ought to have kept a separate set of books. Above 
all, as the privilege of circulating bank notes, and thus creating a paper cur- 
rency, is that function of a bank which most deeply and vitally affects the 
community, the new bank ought to have canceled or destroyed all the notes 
of the old bank Avhich it found in its possession on the 4th of March, 1836, 
and ought to have redeemed the remainder, at its counter, as they were 
demanded by the holders, and then destroyed them. This obligation no Sen- 
ator has attempted to doubt, or to deny. But what was the course of the 
bank ? It has grossly violated both the old and the new charter. It at once 
declared independence of both, and appropriated to itself all the notes of the 
old bank, not only those which were then still in circulation, but those which 
had been redeemed before it accepted the assignment, and were then lying 
dead in its vaults. I have now before me the lirst monthly statement which 
was ever made by the bank to the auditor general of Pennsylvania. It is 
dated on the 2d of April, 1836, and signed J. Cowperthwaite, acting cashier. 
In this statement the bank charges itself with " notes issued," $36,620,420.16 ; 
whilst in its cash account, along with its specie and the notes of State banks, 
it credits itself with " notes of the Bank of the United States and offices," on 
hand, $16,794,713.71. It thus seized these dead notes to the amount of 
$16,794,713.71, and transferred them into cash; whilst the difference between 
those on hand and those issued, equal to $19,854,706.45, was the circulation 
which the new bank boasted it had inherited from the old. It thus, in an 
instant, appropriated to itself, and adopted as its own circulation, all the notes 
and all the illegal branch drafts of the old bank which were then in existence. 
Its boldness was equal to its utter disregard of law. In this first return, it 
not only proclaimed to the legislature and people of Pennsylvania that it had 
disregarded its trust as assignee of the old bank, by seizing upon the whole 
of the old circulation and converting it to its own use, but that it had violated 
one of the fundamental provisions of its new charter. 

In Pennsylvania we have, for many years past, deemed it wise to increase 
the specie basis of our paper circulation. We know that, under the universal 
law of currency, small notes and gold and silver coin of the same denomina- 
tion cannot circulate togethei-. The one will expel the other. Accordingly, 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 429 

it is now long since we prohibited our banks from issuing notes of a less de- 
nomination than five dollars. The legislature which rechartered the Bank of 
the United States, deemed it wise to proceed one step further in regard to 
this mammoth institution ; and in that opinion I entirely concur. Accord- 
ingly, by the sixth fundamental article of its charter, they declare that " the 
notes and bills which shall be issued by order of said corporation, or under its 
authority, shall be binding upon it; and those made payable to order shall be 
assignable by endorsement, but none shall be issued of a denomination less than 
ten dollars." 

Now, it is well known to every Senator within the sound of my voice, 
that a large proportion of these resurrection notes, as they have been aptly 
called, which have been issued and reissued by order of the new bank, are of 
the denomination of five dollars. Here, then, is a plain, palpable violation, 
not only of the spirit, but of the very letter of its charter. The Senate 
will perceive that the bank, as if to meet the very case, is not merely pro- 
hibited from issuing its own notes, signed by its own president and cashier, of 
a denomination less than ten dollars, but this prohibition is extended to the 
notes or bills which shall be issued by its order, or under its authority. If I 
should even be mistaken in this construction of the law, and I believe I am 
not, it would only follow that its conduct has not amounted to a legal for- 
feiture of its charter. In both cases the violation of the spirit of its charter, 
and the contravention of the wise policy of the legislature, are equally glar- 
ing. So entirely did the bank make these dead notes its own peculiar circu- 
lation, that until July last, in its monthly returns to the Auditor General of 
Pennsylvania, the new and the old notes are blended together, without any 
distinction. In that return we were, for the first time, officially informed 
that the bank had ever issued any notes of its own. 

And here an inciilent occurs to me which will be an additional proof how 
lawless is this bank, whenever obedience to its charter interferes in the least 
degree with its policy. By the tenth fundamental article of that charter, it is 
required to " make to the Auditor General monthly returns of its condition, 
showing the detaUs of its operations according to the forms of the returns the 
Bank of the United States now makes to the Secretary of the Treasury of 
the United States, or according to such form as may be established by law." 
From no idle curiosity, but from a desire to ascertain, as far as possible, the 
condition of the banks of the country, and the amount of their circulation, I 
requested the Auditor General, during the late special session of Congress in 
September, to send me the return of the bank for that month. In answer, 
he informed me, under date of the 22d of September, that the bank had not 
made any return to his office since the loth of the preceding May. Thus, 
from the date of the suspension of specie payments until some time after the 
22d of September last, how long I do not know, a period during which the 
public mind was most anxious on the subject, the bank put this provision of 
its charter at defiance. Whether it thus omitted its duty because at the date 
of the suspension of specie payments it had less than a million and a half of 



430 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

specie in its vaults, I shall not pretend to determine. If tliis wore the reason, 
I have no doubt that it sent to the Auditor General all the intermediate 
month!}- returns on the 2d of October, 1837, because at that period it had 
increased its gold and silver to more than three millions ot' dollai-s. 

In order to illustrate tlie enormity of the olVence now proposed to bo 
punished, Senatore have instituted several comparisons. No case which they 
have imagined equals the otlence as it actually exists. Would it not, says 
one gentleman, be a flagrant breach of ti'ust for an executor, entrusted with 
the settlement of his testator's estate, to reissue, and again put in circulation 
for his own benetit, the bills of exchange or promissory notes which he had 
found among the papei-s of the deceased, and which had been paid and ex- 
tinguished in his lifetime ? I answer, that it would. But, in that case, the 
imposition upon the community would necessai-ily be limited, whilst tlie 
means of detection would be ample. The sjmie may be observed in regard 
to the case of the trustee, which has been suggested. What comparison do 
these cases bear to that of the conduct of the bank? The amount of its re- 
issues of these dead notes of its testator is man}' millions. Their circulation 
is coextensive with the Union, and there is no possible means of detection. 
No man who receives this paper can tell whether it belongs to that class 
which the new bank originally found dead in its vaults, or to that which it 
has since redeemed and reissued, in violation of law ; or to that Avhich has 
remained circulating hwfitUif in the community, and has never been redeemed 
since the old charter expired. There is no earmark upon these notes. It is 
impossible to distinguish those which have been illegally reissued from the 
remainder. 

I can imagine but one case which would present any thing like a partdlel 
to the conduct of the bank. In October last, we authorized the issue of 
$10,000,000 of Treasury notes, and directed that when they were received in 
payment of the public dues, they should not be reissued, but be canceled. 
Now, suppose the Secretary of the Treasury had happened to be the presi- 
dent of a bank in this District, and, in that character, had reissued these dead 
treasury notes, which he ought to have canceled, and again put them into 
circulation, in violation of the law, then a case would exist which might be 
compared with that now before the Senate. If such a case should ever occur, 
would not the Secretary at once be impeached ; and is there a Senator upon 
this floor, who would not pronounce him guilty ? The pecuniary injury to 
the United States might be greater in the supposed tlian in the actual case ; 
but the degree of moral guilt would be the same. 

Whether it be politic to pass this law is a more doubtful question. Judging 
from past experience, the bank may openly violate its provisions with impu- 
nity. It can easily evade them by sending packages of these old notes to the 
South and Southwest, by its agents, there to be reissued by banks or individuals 
in its confidence. There is one fact, however, from which I am encouraged to 
hope that this law may prove effectual. No man on this floor has attempted 
to justify, or even to palliate, the conduct of the bank. Its best friends have 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 431 

not darcfl to utter a fiinglo wor'l in its defence against this diarge. Tlio moral 
influ(;rico of tJi^-ir Hilcncc, and tlifi open conderniiiition of its conduct by some 
of tliorn, may induce the bank U) obey the law. 

I now approar;h the question — fJo Congress possess the power under the 
Constitution to pass this bill ? In other words, have we power to restrain the 
trustees of our own bank from reissuing the old notes of that iastitution which 
have already been redeemed and ought to be destroyed? Can there be a doubt 
of the existence of this power? The bare statement of the question seems 
to me sufficient tfj remove ev(jTy difficulty. It la almost too plain for argu- 
ment. I should be glad if any gentleman would even prove this power to be 
doubtful. In that event I should refrain from its exercise. I am a .State rights 
man, and in favor of a strict constnaction of the Constitution. The older I 
grow, and the more experience I acquire, the more deeply rooted does this 
doctrine become in my rnind. I consider a strict construction of the Consti- 
tution necessary not only to the harmony which ought to exist between the 
Federal and State Governments, but to the perpetuation of the Union. I 
shall exercise no power which I do not consider clear. I call upon gentle- 
men, therefore, to break their determined silence upon this subject, and con- 
vince me even that the existence of the power is douVAful. If they do, I 
pledge myself Uj vote against the passage of the bill. 

If this power could only be maintained by some of tlie arguments advanced 
V>y the friends of the bill, in the early part of this discussion, it never should 
receive my vote. Principles were then avowed scarcely less dangerous and 
unsound than the principle on which the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Prentiss) 
iasists that the friends of the bill must claim this power. He contends that it 
does not exist at all, unless it be under that construction of the Constitution 
advocated by his friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), which would give 
to Congress power over the whole paper currency of the country under the 
coining and commercial powers of the Constitution. The Senator from Con- 
necticut (Mr. Niles) was the first in this debate who presented in bold relief 
the principle on which thw bill can securely rest. 

Neither shall I dodge this question, as some Senators have done, by taking 
shelter under the pretext that it is a question for the judiciary to decide, 
whether the general language of the bill be applicable to tVie officers of the 
Bank of the United States under the Pennsylvania charter. We all know 
that it was intended to embrace them. Indeed, it was their conduct, and that 
alone, which called this bill into existence. It is true that the provisions of 
the bill extend to all corporations created by Congress; but it is equally 
certain, that had it not been intended to apply to the Bank of the United 
States, it would have been confined in express terms to the District of 
Columbia, where alone corporations now exist under the authority of Congress. 
Away with all such subterfuges I I will have none of them. 

Suppose, sir, that at any time Avithin the period of two years thus allowed 
by the charter to the president and directors of the bank to wind up its afifairs, 
these officers, created under your own authority, had attempted to throw 



432 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

thirty millions of dollars of their dead paper again into circulation, would you 
have had no power to pass a law to prevent and to punish such an atrocious 
fraud ? Would you have been compelled to look on and patiently submit to 
such a violation of the charter which you had granted ? Have you created 
an institution, and expressly hmited its term of existence, which you cannot 
destroy after that term has expired ? This would indeed be a political Hydra 
which must exist forever, without any Hercules to destroy it. If you possess 
no power to restrain the circulation of the notes of the old bank, they may 
continue to circulate forever in defiance of the power which called them into 
existence. You have created that which you have no power to destroy, 
although the law which gave it birth limited the term of its existence. Will 
any Senator contend that during these two years allowed by the charter for 
winding up the concerns of the bank, we possessed no power to restrain its 
president and directors from reissuing these old notes ? There is no man on 
this floor bold enough to advance such a doctrine. This point being conceded, 
the power to pass the present bill follows as a necessary consequence. 

If the president and directors of the old bank could not evade our authority, 
the next question is, whether, by assigning the property of the corporation to 
a trustee the day before the charter expired, and delivering up to him the old 
notes which ought to have been canceled, they were able to cut this trustee 
loose from the obligations which had been imposed upon them by the charter, 
and from the authority of Congress. Vain and impotent, indeed, would this 
Government be, if its authority could be set at nought by such a shallow con- 
trivance. No, sir, the fountain cannot ascend beyond its source. The assignee 
in such a case is not released from any obligation which the assignor assumed 
by accepting the original charter. In regard to Congress, the trustee stands 
in the same situation with the president and directors of the old bank. We 
have the same power to compel him to wind up the concerns of the bank, 
according to the charter, that we might have exercised against those from 
whom he accepted the assignment. The question is too plain for argument. 

The present case is still stronger than the one which T have presented. It is 
an assignment by the old Bank of the United States, not to strangers, not to 
third persons, but to themselves, in the new character conferred upon them 
by the legislature of Pennsylvania. This new charter expressly incorporates 
all the stockholders of the old bank, except the United States, so that the 
individuals composing both corporations were identical. For the purpose of 
effecting this transfer from themselves to themselves, they got up the 
machinery of one president and one board of directors for the old bank, and 
another president and another board of directors for the new bank. What 
kind of answer, then, would it be to Congress for them to say : True, we 
accepted a charter under your authority, by Avhich we were bound to reissue 
none of our old notes after the 3d March, 1836, but we have since assumed 
a new character ; and under our old character, we have transferred the bank 
which you created, to ourselves in our new character; and we have thus 
released ourselves from all our old obligations, and you have no constitutional 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 433 

power to enforce them against us ? No sir, no sir ; we have the power, and 
it is our duty, to compel the president and directors of the bank, which we 
established, or their assignees, to close its concerns; and this power will con- 
tinue until the duty shall be finally accomplished. The one power is a neces- 
sary implication from the other. If this duty has not been performed within 
the two years which we have allowed for its fulfilment, our power depends 
not upon any such limitation, but upon the fact whether the concerns of the 
bank have been actually closed. If this were not the case, then all the affairs 
of the bank left unfinished at the end of these two years would be outlawed. 
This limitation was intended not to abridge the power of Congress, but to 
hasten the action of the president and directors in winding up the concerns 
of the bank. At this very session, and since the two years have expired, 
Congress has passed an act, without a shadow of opposition from any quarter, 
giving the president and directors of the old bank authority to prosecute and 
defend existing suits. I should be glad to see any Senator rise in his place, 
and make even a plausible argument in opposition to these plain and almost 
self-evident positions. 

In this brief argument, I have not attempted to derive any power from the 
fact that the United States were proprietors of one-fifth of the stock of the 
old bank, and that they might be rendered responsible, either legally or 
equitably, for the eventual redemption of these dead notes. I disclaim any 
such source of power. To be a proprietor is one thing, and to be a sovereign 
is another. The mere fact that we owned stock can confer no power upon us, 
which we would not have possessed, had we never been interested to the 
amount of a dollar. We should have the same power to wind up a bank 
emanating from our sovereign authority in the one case as in the other. We 
possess the same power to close the concerns of all the banks in the District 
of Columbia after their charters shall have expired, although we are not pro- 
prietors of any of their stock, which we have to wind up the Bank of the 
United States, in which we were so deeply interested. 

I need scarcely observe that I do not contend for any power to punish 
citizens of the United States, or even the officers of banking institutions, 
except such of them only as the trustees of the bank created by ourselves, 
for issuing these dead notes. We intend to punish the trustees under our own 
law, and them alone, for the violation of that law. These notes may circulate 
from hand to hand without rendering those who receive or those who pay 
them obnoxious to any punishment. Even if we possessed the power, it 
would be highly unjust to attempt its exercise. As I observed before, 
these notes have no earmarks, and no man can tell whether any one of them 
has been illegally reissued by the bank since the 3d March, 1836, or whether 
it was issued before that date, and has continued legally to circulate in the 
community ever since. 

I repeat, I should be glad to see any Senator, and especially any one who 
believes that Congress possesses the constitutional power to charter a Bank of 
the United States, rise in liis place, and make even a plausible argument in 

I.— 28 



434 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

opposition to the plain and almost self-evident positions which I have taken 
in support of the power to pass this bill. Those Senators who doubt or deny 
our power to create such a bank are placed in a different situation, because 
their vote in favor of this bill might at first view seem, by implication, to con- 
cede that power. This objection does not appear to me to be sound. That 
question cannot be fairly raised by this bill. Whether the charter of the late 
bank was constitutional is no longer a fair subject of consideration. It was 
adopted by Congress, approved by the President, and afterwards pronounced 
to be constitutional by the highest judicial tribunal of the land. It thus 
received every sanction necessary to make it binding on the people of the 
United States. The question was thus settled beyond the control of any 
individual, and it was the duty of every good citizen to submit. Under every 
government there must be a time when such controversies shall cease ; and 
you might now as well attempt to exclude Louisiana from the Union, because 
you may believe her admission was unconstitutional, as to act upon the 
principle, in the present case, that Congress had no power to charter the late 
bank. No man on this floor had ever avowed that he would vote to repeal 
the charter of the late bank, during the twenty years of its existence, because 
he might have thought it was originally unconstitutional. During this period 
all were obliged to submit. Under such circumstances, it would be carrying 
constitutional scruples very far, indeed, for any gentleman to contend that, 
although the bank has existed under the sanction of a law which we were all 
bound to obey, we cannot now execute that law and close its concerns, 
because as individuals we may have deemed it to be originally unconstitutional. 
If it had been so, the obligation upon us would only be the stronger to wind 
it up finally, and thus terminate its existence. 

I most cheerfully admit that if an attempt should ever be made to charter 
another bank, the question of constitutional power would then again be 
referred to each individual member of Congress, to be decided according to 
the dictates of his own judgment and his own conscience. 

Before I take my seat, I intend to make some remarks on the causes of 
the suspension of specie payments by the banks of the country, and the 
causes equally powerful which must, and that ere long, compel a resump- 
tion. 

The late manifesto issued by the present Bank of the United States dis- 
plays, upon its face, that it has inherited from the old bank an unconquerable 
disposition to interfere in the politics of the country. This has been its curse, 
its original sin, to which it owes all its calamities and all its misfortunes. It 
has not yet learned wisdom from its severe experience. Would that it might, 
and confine itself to its appropriate sphere I As a citizen of Pennsylvania, I 
most ardently and devoutly express this wish. It has now set itself up, as the 
primary power, against the resumption of specie payments, and has attempted 
to enlist in the same cause all the other banks of the country. Its language 
to them is, that '■ the Bank of the United States makes common cause with 
the other banks." And again : " They (the banks) are now safe and strong, 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 435 

and they should not venture beyond their entrenchments, while the enemy is 
in the plain before them." " The American banks should do, in short, what 
the American army did at New Orleans, stand fast behind their cotton bales, 
until the enemy has left the country." 

Thus whilst every eye and every heart was directed to the banks, expect- 
ing anxiously from them a speedy resumption of specie payments, this grand 
regulator of the currency has proclaimed to the country that all its vast power 
will be exerted to prevent the accomplishment of our wishes. 

The bank does not even attempt to conceal the fact that, in pursuing this 
course, it has been actuated by political hostility against the present adminis- 
tration. It has been boldly avowed that " if the banks resume, and are able, 
by sacrificing the community, to continue for a few months, it will he conclu- 
sively employed at the next elections to show that the schemes of the executive are 
not as destructive as they will prove hereafter." In plain language, the banks 
must not resume before the next elections; they must not open their vaults, 
pay their honest debts, and thus redeem the country from the curse of an 
irredeemable paper currency; because, if they should, this may operate in 
favor of the present administration, and place its opponents in a minority. 
And such is the conduct of the bank whilst it vaunts its own abiUty to resume 
immediately. 

The bank proceeds still further, and complains that " bank notes are pro- 
scribed not merely from the land offices, but from all payments of every 
description to the Government." I would ask, has any Senator upon this 
floor, has any statesman of any party in the country, ever raised his voice in 
favor of the receipt by the Government of irredeemable bank paper ? I beg 
their pardon ; two Senators have proposed such a measure, [Messrs. Preston and 
Clay] ; but I will do them the justice to say, that although I considered their 
proposition most unwise and impolitic, and resisted it as such at the time, yet 
they intended by this means to enable the banks the sooner to resume specie 
payments. 

Mr. Preston. It was exclusively limited to that consideration. 

Mr. Buchanan. Although the proposition was limited to the first of 
August, the Senators themselves upon reflection, thought it so improper that 
they abandoned it, and we have heard nothing of it since. 

What would have been the condition of the country, at the present 
moment, had we received irredeemable bank notes in payments of the public 
dues ? The banks, by our conduct, would have been encouraged to increase 
their discounts and expand their issues, and we should have gone from bad to 
worse, until, at this moment, we should have had no prospect of the resump- 
tion of specie payments. Mr. Cheves has informed us that if the Government 
had not stood firm in 1819 against the receipt of irredeemable notes, the 
banks would at that period have suspended. Much more necessary is it that 
we should now maintain the same ground, in order to secure a resumption. 
Had we pursued any other course, it is true we should have but one cur- 
rency for the Government and the people ; but it would have been currency 



436 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

of irredeemable bank rags, without the hope of a better. And yet the Bank 
of the United States complains that the Grovernment does not receive such 
paper. In order to have done so, we must have repealed the existing laws 
upon the subject; and who has ventured to propose any such measure? 

The Bank of the United States has succeeded, at the late bank convention 
in New York, in keeping its forces behind their cotton bales. The banks of 
only two States in the Union have voted against the resolution to suspend 
the resumption of specie payments until the first day of January next. These 
were New York and Mississippi ; and whether the latter voted thus because 
their banks are ready now to resume, or desired to postpone resumption until 
a still more distant day, I shall not pretend to determine. After this display 
of power, no one will question the abihty of the bank to keep its forces be- 
hind their entrenchments, unless they should be driven into the plain by the 
resistless power of public opinion. 

Several weeks ago I attempted to imitate the illustrious examples which 
had been set before me on this floor, and became a political prophet. I then 
predicted that, before the close of the present year, commerce and manufac- 
tures would revive and flourish, and the country would be restored to its 
former prosperity. The signs of the times have already confirmed the truth 
of this prophecy. Encouraged by past experience, I shall venture to make 
another prediction : There is not a sound and solvent bank in any of the 
Atlantic States of this Union, including the Bank of the United States, which 
will not have resumed specie payments long before the first of January. All 
the opposition of the banks themselves cannot prevent this result. In the 
very nature of things it must come to pass. The power of public opinion is 
yet still greater in this country than that of the banks. The Bank of the 
United States will not be able to keep its forces behind their cotton bags until 
so late a period. 

It is now too late in the day for us any longer to doubt what was the 
cause of the suspension of specie payments. That question has been settled 
on the other side as well as on this side of the Atlantic. Abundance of light 
has been shed upon this subject, and no two sound-judging men, at all ac- 
quainted with the facts, can arrive at different conclusions. It has already 
become history. And yet the bank, in its manifesto, has not once alluded to 
this cause. What was it? In the perpetual fluctuations which must ever 
be produced by our present banking system, unless it should be regulated 
by State legislation, of which I now almost despair, it was expanded in the 
commencement of the year 1837 almost to the point of explosion. The bub- 
ble is created, it expands, and reflects the most brilliant colors. Its admirers 
gaze upon it with hope and ecstasy, when, suddenly, it bursts, and leaves them 
in ruin and despair. Such has been the history of the past, and such will be 
that of the future. This expansion had produced, as it must ever produce, 
enormous speculation and over-trading. The commercial debt which we then 
owed to England for foreign merchandise was immense. We must have suf- 
fered the fatal collapse sooner or later, but a circumstance then occurred in 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 437 

England which at once produced the explosion. It was the spark applied to 
the magazine of gunpowder. 

A similar state of expansion then existed in England. They were threat- 
ened with similar evils from extravagant bank credits, and their inevitable 
consequence — enormous speculation and over-trading. The Bank of England 
had in vain attempted to control the joint-stock banks, and confine them 
within reasonable limits. She at last became alarmed for her own safety. 
In the be"-innin"' of 1837 her stock of specie was reduced to about four mil- 
lions of pounds sterling, or one-sixth of her circulation and deposits. This 
was not more than one-half of the proportion which, it is believed, she ought 
to have in order to render her secure. The state of the foreign exchanges 
was gradually withdrawing the remaining bullion from her vaults. At this 
crisis, under the influence of a panic, she withdrew her credits from the 
American houses in England, and ruined them. The price of cotton, in con- 
sequence, suddenly fell from nineteen and twenty cents to seven and eight 
cents per pound ; and thus, according to the best and most discreet estimate 
which I have seen, we lost at least thirty milHon of dollars. The sum was 
thus, as it were in a single moment, abstracted from our means of paying the 
immense commercial balance against us. At the close of this disastrous opera- 
tion, that balance was estimated at forty millions of dollars. What was the 
immediate consequence ? A drain of specie then commenced from our banks 
for exportation, in order to pay this debt, and they were thus compelled to sus- 
pend or be ruined. Another circumstance existed to increase our embarrass- 
ments. Our merchants had drawn heavy bills upon England, predicated upon 
the cotton which they had shipped there, expecting to receive the old prices. 
In consequence of the sudden fall of prices, these bills were dishonored, and 
came back protested. Thus many of our largest mercantile houses were ruined. 

The catastrophe proceeded from the same causes, and was similar in both 
countries, except that in England the banks Avere not compelled to suspend 
specie payments. The revenue of both has been insuflicient to meet the cur- 
rent expenses of the Government, and each will be obliged to borrow nearly 
the same sum to supply the deficiency. 

This is now history, which can neither be changed nor perverted. On 
both sides of the Atlantic all men of business and practical statesmen have 
come to the same conclusion. Away, then, with your Specie Circular, your 
mismanagement of the deposits, and your clamor raised by the executive 
against bank notes, as the causes of the suspension of specie payments. The 
bank calculates too much upon the political credulity of the people, when, at 
this late day, after the subject is perfectly imderstood, it attempts to palm off 
upon them such exploded reasons for the suspension. A convulsion which 
has shaken the commercial world to its centre, and has extended over three- 
quarters of the globe, could never spring from such trivial causes. 

If the executive has been carrying on a war against the credit system of 
the country, and in favor of an exclusive metallic currency for the people of 
the United States, I am ignorant of the fact. I have never even suspected it. 



438 LIFE OF JA^IES BUCHANAN. 

I believe this is a mere phantom which has been conjured up to alarm the 
fears of the timid. If the President ever should wage any such war, I shall 
not fight under his banner. The only pretext upon which this charge has 
been founded is, that he and his political friends desire to separate the busi- 
ness of the Treasury from that of the banks, not to render them hostile to 
each other. Until that propitious day shall arrive, we shall be forever agitated 
by the connection of the currency with our miserable party politics. Political 
panics, political pressures, charges against the Government for exercising an 
improper influence over the banks, and charges against the banlvs for interfer- 
ing with the politics of the country ; all, all which have kept us in a state of 
constant agitation for the last seven years will continue to exist, and will be 
brought into action upon every successive election for President and Vice 
President. We shall thus continue in a state of perpetual commotion ; and 
the great interests of the country will be sacrificed. Let the Treasury and the 
banks part in peace, and whilst they are mutually independent, let them wage 
no war against each other ; and I solemnly believe it Avould be the greatest 
blessing which could be conferred upon both parties. To this extent, I should 
go with the President if I had the power ; but when I determine to obey 
instructions, I shall do it honestly and fairly. I shall, therefore, say no more 
on this subject. 

It is true that at the special session I did endeavor to prove that the present 
banking system, under its existing regulations, was one of the very worst 
which the art of man could devise. Under it, ruinous expansions and revul- 
sions must continue to succeed each other at stated periods, and many of the 
best and most enterprising men of the country must become its victims. I 
then expressed a hope, not unmingled with fear, that the State legislatures 
at their next session might impose wholesome restrictions upon their banking 
institutions — restrictions which would prove equally advantageous to the banks 
and the people. These legislatures have all now risen without prescribing 
any such regulations, and we are destined again and again to pass through 
the same vicissitudes which we have so often already witnessed. 

The Whigs have always been exceedingly unlucky in regard to the time 
of these periodical revulsions, occasioned by excessive banking. They have 
cither come too soon or too late to answer their political purposes. Had the 
suspension of specie payments occurred one year sooner than it did, the hero 
of Tippecanoe might have been the successor of the hero of New Orleans. 
But the revulsion came again at the wrong time ; and long before the Presi- 
dential election of 1840, the country will again be prosperous. The effects of 
the suspension will have passed away, like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
without leaving a trace behind. Our late experience has been so severe, that 
the next bank explosion may possibly be postponed until the year 1844. 
Whom it may tlaen benefit I know not, nor do I much care. One thing is 
certain, that these revulsions can never do anything but injury to the party in 
power. It is the nature of man to accuse the Government, or anything else, 
except his own misconduct, for his misfortunes. 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 439 

I now approach a much more agreeable part of my subject; and that is, 
to prove that the banks must and will speedily resume specie payments. I 
shall attempt to establish that now is the very time, the accepted time, the 
best time, and, within the period of a few months, the only time, when they 
can resume, without the least embarrassment. Some of the causes which 
will speedily effect this happy result, I shall enumerate. 

In the first place, I shall do the banks of the country generally the justice 
to say, that since the suspension of specie payments they have curtailed their 
circulation and their loans to a great extent, and have done everything they 
reasonably could to atone for their past extravagance. The banks of Penn- 
sylvania, including that of the United States, during a period of ten months, 
commencing in January, and ending in November, 1837, had reduced their 
circulation from twenty-five millions and a quarter to almost seventeen mil- 
lions, and their discounts from eighty-six millions and a half to nearly seventy- 
one millions, whilst, during the same period, they had increased their specie 
from five millions and three-quarters to upwards of seven millions. From all 
I can learn, they have been since progressing at nearly the same rate, though 
I have not seen their official returns. The banks of other States have been 
generally pursuing the same course. The consequence is, that the confidence 
of the country in their banking institutions has been, in a great degree, 
rSstored. I feel convinced that if they should resume specie payments to- 
morrow, in the interior of Pennsylvania, at least, there would be no run 
upon them, except for as much silver change as might be required to supply 
the place of the miserable trash now in circulation under the denomination of 
shinplasters. Besides they would soon receive on deposit a greater amount 
from those who have been hoarding specie, under the belief that it would be 
safer at home than in the banks, and in the hope that they might hereafter 
use it to great advantage. No foreign demand now exists to drain the banks 
of their specie; on the contrary, the reflux tide has set in strongly, and is 
now wafting immense sums of gold and silver to our shores. 

But, sir, another powerful cause of resumption exists. Our exports of 
cotton have, many months ago, paid our foreign commercial debt. Whilst 
that has been extinguished, the disastrous condition of our currency has 
reduced almost to nothing the orders of our merchants for foreign goods. 
Our imports are of small comparative value. In the mean time, our cotton 
crop of 1837 has been regularly and steadily seeking its accustomed markets 
in England and France, "We have sold much, and bought little, and the 
balance in our favor is nearly all returning in specie. From the last English 
accounts which I have seen, the exports of specie from that country to this 
were still on the increase; and now, by almost every vessel from abroad 
which reaches our shores, we are receiving gold and silver. Specie, by the 
latest advices, was the most profitable means of remittance from England to 
the United States, yielding a profit of four per cent. When Congress met 
in September last, the rate of exchange against us on England was upwards 
of twenty per cent. It is now reduced to six per cent., which is three or 



440 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

four per cent, below the specie par. A great revolution in so short a period I 
It proves how vast are the resources of our country. 

This great revolution has been effected by means of our cotton. The 
English manufacturers must have this article, or be ruined. This necessity 
has reversed the ordinary laws of trade, and the foreign market for it has 
remained firm and steady, although we bring home scarcely any equivalent, 
except in specie. 

If a large portion of our cotton crop still remains unsold, so much the 
better. The golden tide will continue so much the longer to flow into our 
country. It is the policy of our banks to take it at the flood, and go on to 
fortune. If the banks do but seize the present golden opportunity, they will 
have completely fortified themselves before a reverse can come. This state 
of things cannot always continue. A reaction must occur. If the banks 
wait for the ebbing tide, and postpone a resumption until our merchants shall 
make heavy purchases abroad, and specie shall begin to be exported, they will 
then encounter difficulties which they need not now dread. I again repeat 
that this moment is the accepted time for the banks to resume. 

But it is not only the ordinary laws of trade which are now bringing vast 
amounts of specie to our country. Two other causes are operating powerfully 
to produce this result. 

The conduct of the Bank of England, in arresting its credits to the Amef- 
ican houses, Avhich was the immediate cause of the suspension of specie pay- 
ments, has been loudly condemned by men of all parties there. This measure 
has done that country nearly as much injury as it has done this, because 
England must always suffer from every derangement in our currency. The 
Bank is now conscious of this truth, and is retracing her steps. She has 
increased her stock of bullion between February, 1837, and March, 1838, 
from £4,032,090 to upwards of ten millions sterling. She is now strong, and 
it is her interest, as well as that of the people of England, that she should use 
this strength in assisting us to resume specie payments. Accordingly, she 
has, through the agency of one of our most intelligent and enterprising 
citizens, made an arrangement to furnish the banks of New York one million 
sterling in specie, to aid them in resuming payments in gold and silver. This 
million is now arriving, by instalments, in the United States. In resuming at 
the present moment, our banks have everything to hope, and nothing to fear, 
from England. 

Again ; The spirit of internal improvement is abroad throughout our land. 
States and private companies have loans to make for the purpose of erecting 
their pubUo works. Money is now plenty in England, and is everywhere 
seeking an investment. The derangement in the business of that country has 
thrown capital out of employment. The rate of interest has been reduced to 
three and three and a half per cent. Their capitalists are anxious to make 
secure investments in loans to our different State governments, and mcor- 
porated companies, at a higher rate of interest than they can obtain at home. 
These loans are now being disposed of in England to a very large amount ; 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 441 

and the greater proportion of their proceeds must return in specie to this 
country. Everything is propitious to an immediate resumption by our banks. 

Will the Bank of the United States resume ? I confess I do not doubt the 
fact. She has made a false movement, and it is the great prerogative of 
strength to acknovpledge and retrieve an error. Her late manifesto against 
the resumption of specie payments has not found a single advocate on this 
floor. It has struck dumb all her friends. But yesterday she might have 
stood against the world. To-day there is none so poor as to do her reverence. 
Even those who must poUtically suffer by the resumption, because " it will be 
conclusively employed at the next elections, to show that the schemes of the 
executive are not so destructive as they will prove hereafter," have not dared 
to break a lance in her defence. This was not wont to be the case in days of 
yore, for hitherto her champions have been always ready to do battle in her 
cause. Notwithstanding all which has been said upon the subject, I am not 
one of those Avho believe that the Bank of the United States is not able to 
resume. Although the statement of her condition, as recently published, is not 
very flattering, yet her resources are vast. She is able if she were willing. Of 
this I cannot entertain a doubt. 

Again : Will not the bank take compassion on the good city of Philadel- 
phia, which has ever been devoted to its interest ? Boston has been called the 
Athens of America ; New York, the great Commercial Emporium ; and Balti- 
more, the Monumental City ; whilst Philadelphia has been distinguished by 
the name of the City of the Bank or marble palace • and well have her 
citizens earned this distinction by their loyalty. Will the bank now consent 
to see her commerce and trade languish, and her star wane before that of New 
York, rather than retrace its steps and resume specie payments ? No, never. 
Forbid it, gratitude ! 

That this must be the effect, who can doubt ? Merchants who come from 
a distance to purchase goods with money in hand will go where they can buy 
the cheapest ; and goods at a specie standard must always be cheaper than in 
a depreciated currency. Those who have produce to sell, especially if the sale 
is to be made upon credit, will select that market where they will receive its 
pi'ice in a sound currency. Already the prospect of resumption in New York 
has made Philadelphia bank notes worth less by five per cent, than those of 
that city. What will this difference become when the one city shall have 
resumed, and the circulation of the other shall be irredeemable paper ? Who 
that has money to remit or deposit will send it to Philadelphia, to be returned 
in notes depreciated to an extent which cannot be foreseen, when they can 
send it to New York with a perfect confidence that it will be returned to 
them according to the specie standard ? Under such a state of things, the 
trade of New York must increase and flourish at the expense of that of Phila- 
delphia. I have not time, at present, to enter into further particulars on this 
branch of the subject. 

The people of Pennsylvania have submitted patiently to the suspension of 
specie payments by their banks. They have bowed to the necessity which 



442 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

existed, and have treated them with kiadness and generosity. The Bank of 
the United States has proclaimed its ability to resume, and our other banks 
are in the same situation. The necessity for a further suspension no longer 
exists. Pay your honest debts when you are able, is a maxim dear to the 
people of Pennsylvania. This duty has now become a question of morality, 
far transcending any question of policy. If these privileged corporations now 
any longer refuse to pay their honest debts, either for the sake of their own 
advantage, or from a desire to elevate one political party and depress another, 
the indignation of honest men, of all parties, will be roused against them. 
There will be a burst of popular feeling from our mountains and our valleys, 
which they will be compelled to respect. Thank God 1 public opinion in the 
interior of Pennsylvania is yet stronger than the money power. Our people 
will never submit to the degradation that their banks shall furnish them no 
currency but that of irredeemable paper; whilst, throughout the State of New 
York, the banks shall have resumed specie payments. Nothing could be more 
wounding to my own pride, as a Pennsylvanian. 

If our banks should hold out, under the command of their great leader, until 
the first day of January next, many of them will never be able to resume. 
The public confidence, which their conduct since the suspension has hitherto 
inspired, will long ere that distant day cease to exist. No run would now 
be made on them in case they resume ; but if they are forced into the 
measure by public opinion, after resisting as long as they can, the days of 
many of them will then be numbered. Honesty, duty, policy, all conspire to 
dictate to them a speedy resumption. 

In conclusion, permit me to remark, that the people of the United States 
have abundant cause for the deepest gratitude towards that great and glorious 
man now in retirement for preventing the recharter of the Bank of the United 
States. He is emphatically the man of the age, and has left a deeper and 
more enduring impress upon it than any individual of our country. Still, in 
regard to the bank, he performed but half his work. For its completion we 
are indebted to the president of the bank. Had the bank confined itself, after 
it accepted the charter from Pennsylvania, to its mere banking and financial 
operations — had it exerted its power to regulate the domestic exchanges of the 
country — and, above all, had it taken the lead in the resumption of specie 
payments, a new bank, Phcenix-like, might liave arisen from the ashes of the 
old. That danger, from present appearances, has now passed away. The 
open defiance of Congress by the bank — the laws of the country over and 
over again violated — its repeated attempts to interfere in the party politics of 
the day — all, all have taught tlie people the danger of such a vast moneyed 
corporation. Mr. Biddle has finished the work which General Jackson only 
commenced. 

Not one particle of personal hostility towards that gentleman has been 
mingled in my discussion of the question. On the contrary, as a private 
gentleman, I respect him ; and my personal intercourse with him, though not 
frequent, has been of the most agreeable character, I am always ready to 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 443 

do justice to his great and varied talents. I have spoken of the public con- 
duct of the bank over which he presides with the freedom and boldness 
which I shall always exercise in the performance of my public duties. It is 
the president of the bank, not the man, that I have assailed. It is the nature 
of the institution over which he presides that has made him what he is. Like 
all other men, he must yield to his destiny. The possession of such vast and 
unhmited power, continued for a long period of years, would have turned the 
head of almost any other man, and have driven him to as great excesses. 

la vain you may talk to me about paper restrictions in the charter of a 
bank of sufficient magnitude to be able to crush the other banks of the coun- 
try. When did a vast moneyed monopoly ever regard the law, if any great 
interest of its own stood in the way ? It will then violate its charter, and its 
own power will secure it impunity. It well knows that in its destruction the 
ruin of hundreds and thousands would be involved, and therefore it can do 
almost what it pleases. The history of the bank for several years past has 
been one continued history of violated laws, and of attempts to interfere in 
the politics of the country. Create another bank, and place any other man 
at its head, and the result will be the same. Such an institution will always 
hereafter prove too strong for the Government; because we cannot again 
expect to see, at least in our day, another Andrew Jackson in the Presidential 
chair. On the other hand, should such a bank, wielding the moneyed power 
of the country, form an alliance with the political power, and that is the 
natural position of the parties, their combined influence would govern the 
Union, and liberty might become an empty name. 

Mr. Bcchanan's Eeply to Mr. Clay, on the same day. 

Mr. Buchanan said he had never enjoyed many triumphs, and therefore he 
prized the more highly the one which he had won this day. He had forced 
the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] to break that determined 
silence which had hitherto sealed his lips on the subject of this bill. Thus, 
said Mr. B., I have adorned my brow with a solitary sprig of laurel. Not 
one word was he to utter upon the present occasion. This he had announced 
publicly. 

[Here Mr. Clay dissented.] 

Mr. Buchanan. 1 thought he had announced the other day his determina- 
tion not to debate the question, and stated this as the reason why he pro- 
pounded to the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Wall] the question whether, 
in his opinion, John Brockenbrough and Albert Gallatin could be constitu- 
tionally punished by Congress for re-issuing the old notes of the Bank of the 
United States. 

[Mr. Clay again explained.] 

Well, said Mr. Buchanan, the Senator did intend to address the Senate on 
this subject, and the only sprig of laurel which I ever expected to win from 
him has already withered. Yet still there was an evident reluctance on his 



444 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

part, which all must have observed, to enter into this contest. The Senator 
from Vermont [Mr. Prentiss] had made an able constitutional argument in 
opposition to the bill. With the exception of that gentleman, and the Sena- 
tor from South Carolina (Mr. Preston), a profound silence had reigned on this 
(the Whig) side of the house. The question had been propounded by the 
Vice President, and the vote was about to be taken, when I rose and 
addressed the Senate. Immediately after I had taken my seat, the Senator 
from Kentucky sprang to his feet, and made one of his best speeches, for 
it belongs to the character of his mind to make the ablest efforts with the 
least preparation. I will venture to say he had not intended to make that 
speech when he entered the Senate chamber this morning. 

[Mr. Clay admitted this to be the fact.] 

Then, said Mr. Buchanan, I have succeeded, and my sprig of laurel is 
again green. 

The gentleman says I may hang Nick Biddle, if I please ; but I please to 
do no such thing. I would be sorry to subject him even to the punishment 
of imprisonment denounced by this bill ; and if he should ever be convicted 
under its provisions, I hope the court may content itself with the infliction 
of a mere pecuniary fine. Hang Nick Biddle, indeed ! I wish to keep him 
for the service of the Whig party, should they ever come into power. The 
Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Preston] had said, at the extra session, that 
Mr. Biddle, if appointed Secretary of the Treasury, would, in thirty or sixty 
days, I forget which, heal all the disorders in the currency, and remove all the 
financial embarrassments of the Government. His appointment would prove 
a sovereign panacea for all existing evils. Now I go for this administration 
both from principle and inclination, and shall support the re-election of the 
present President ; but if I were a Whig, the Senator from Kentucky would 
be my first choice. I should, therefore, be very sorry to deprive him of the 
services of Mr. Biddle, who will make, in the opinion of the Senator's friend 
from South Carolina, the very best Secretary of the Treasury in the whole 
country. 

The Senator from Kentucky asks me why I do not defend Mr. Biddle, a 
distinguished citizen of my own State. My answer is at hand. I cannot 
defend his conduct as president of the bank, because I believe it to be wholly 
indefensible ; and he has been attacked in no other character. I should have 
been proud and happy to undertake this task, could I have performed it con- 
sistently with my conscience. But why does the Senator propound such a 
question to me ? I confidently expected Mr. Biddle would have been defended 
by a much more eloquent tongue. I defend him ! when the eloquent gentle- 
men all around me are his own peculiar friends ; and yet, strange to tell, not 
one of them has attempted to justify his conduct. " But yesterday he might 
have stood against the world." " He has fallen, fallen from his high estate." 
Whence this ominous silence ? I wished to hear him defended, if it could be 
done, by gentlemen of his own political party, who have never hitherto 
shrunk from such a responsibility. 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 445 

The Senator asserts that the Bank of the United States is no longer in 
existence. But are not the president, directors, and officers, the same that 
they were under the old charter ? Has it not branch banks in at least two 
States — Louisiana and Georgia — and branch agencies scattered over the rest 
of the Union ? And to render its continued existence still more palpable, has 
it not seized all the notes of the old bank, good, bad, and indifferent, and 
converted them to its own use ? Why, sir, according to its very last return, 
it has but little more than three hundred thousand dollars of new notes in cir- 
culation, whilst the circulation of its old notes exceeds six millions. Is it not 
still diffusing its blessings and its benefits everywhere, in the opinion of its 
friends and admirers ? Why has it not, then, proved to be the grand regula- 
tor of the currency, and prevented a suspension of specie payments ? If that 
were impossible, why is it not, at least, the first among the banks to urge 
their resumption ? Had it acted thus, it is possible it might have obtained 
another charter from Congress. But when we find not only that it could not 
save itself from the general crash, but that it is now the great leader in 
opposing a resumption of specie payments, we must lose our confidence in 
its power as a grand regulator. 

But this bank, says the Senator, is a mere domestic institution of Pennsyl- 
vania. With one of its arms stretched across the Atlantic, for the purpose 
of loaning money, buying bills, and regulating exchanges there, whilst, with 
the other, it conducts immense banking and trading operations here, co- 
extensive with the Union, how can it be called a mere domestic institution of 
a single State? Nay, more: it seems, by its last manifesto, to have taken 
" the great commercial and pecuniary interests " of the Union into its keep- 
ing, both at home and abroad. Sir, a single State cannot furnish employ- 
ment for its immense capital. It would starve within such narrow limits. It 
is no more a State institution now than it was under the old charter, except 
tliat its existence as the same identical corporation has been continued by an 
act of the legislature of Pennsylvania, instead of an act of Congress ; and 
that, too, with much greater powers than it formerly possessed. It never 
ventured to plant itself in England under the old charter. No, sir, let not 
gentlemen delude themselves. The old Bank of the United States still 
lives, and moves, and has its being, without even having changed its name. 

The Senator from Kentucky asks, why pass this bill? He says it is 
wholly unnecessary ; and whilst he admits that the present bank had no legal 
power to reissue these old notes, he thinks it ought not to be prevented from 
acting thus, because these notes furnish the best and only universal currency 
in the Union. The Senator reminds me of the ancient heretics which existed 
in the Church, mentioned and condemned by the Apostle Paul. Their doc- 
trine was, that it was lawful to do evil that good might come. It seems we 
are now to have a similar sect of political heretics, whose doctrine is, violate 
the law, if you can thereby furnish a good currency for the people. But 
there was not the least necessity for any such violation. As the old notes 
came in, the bank might have supplied their place by circulating its own 



44G LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

new notes. They are a better currency in every respect • because the present 
bank is under a legal obligation to redeem them on demand. Not so in regard 
to the old notes. Their immediate redemption depends upon the honor of the 
bank, and nothing more. I have no doubt Mr. Biddle intends to redeem 
them, but he may be succeeded by another and a different man. Besides, 
the bank may, in the course of time, become insolvent ; and in that event the 
payment of its own notes and debts must be preferred to that of these resur- 
rection notes. It is certain that no direct remedy can be had upon them 
against the present bank. 

The Senator denounces the present bill not only as unconstitutional, but as 
the most enormous stretch of power he has ever known to be attempted. I 
am glad to find that the Senator has become the advocate of a strict con- 
struction of the Constitution, and an enemy to the exercise of doubtful 
powers. In this particular we agree. And I am much pleased to learn from 
himself that he does not concur with the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. 
"Webster] in deriving power over the paper currency of the country from the 
clauses in the Constitution authorizing Congress to coin money and regulate 
commerce. By abandoning this latitudinarian construction, however, he vir- 
tually surrenders up the power to create a national bank. The Senator shakes 
his head, but I shall endeavor to prove that this is the dilemma in which he 
has placed himself. On what ground did the Supreme Court decide the bank 
to be constitutional ? It was because Congress, possessing the express power 
to levy and collect taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United 
States, might create a bank by implication, if they believed it to be a neces- 
sary agent in the execution of this taxing power. Now will any man, at 
this day, pretend that the taxes of the Government cannot be collected, and 
its debts paid, without the agency of such a bank ? I think not. It must 
have been for the purpose of extricating himself from this dilemma, and find- 
ing a power somewhere else to establish a bank, that the Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts asserted a general power in Congress to create and regulate the 
paper currency of the country, and derived it from the coining and commer- 
cial clauses in the Constitution. I should be pleased always to agree Avith 
the Senator from Kentucky, and I am glad that we unite in denying the 
power claimed by the Senator from Massachusetts. 

In regard to the power to pass this bill, I shall state the proposition of the 
Senator from Kentucky as fairly as I can. He says that the Bank of the 
United States is a corporation created by a sovereign State, and that this bill, 
intended to operate upon such a corporation, is wholly unconstitutional and 
subversive of State rights. Now, sir, if the bill were intended to act upon 
the bank, as a Pennsylvania corporation, I should abandon the argument. 
The president and directors of this bank sustain two characters, totally sep- 
arate and distinct from each other. They are officers of the Pennsylvania 
Bank ; and in that character they are beyond our control. But they have 
voluntarily assumed another character, by becoming assignees and trustees of 
the old bank chartered by Congress, for the purpose of winding up its con- 



SPEECH ON THE BANK QUESTION. 447 

cerns; and it is in this character, and this alone, that we have any jurisdiction 
over them. We do not attempt to interfere with the bank as a corporation 
of the State of Pennsylvania. No, sir ; we only undertake to operate upon 
it as the assignee of our old bank. The gentleman asked if the old bank had 
assigned its property to individual trustees, could we pass any law to compel 
these trustees to wind up its concerns? Most certainly we could; because, 
no matter into whose hands the duty of winding up our bank may have 
passed, we should possess the power to compel a performance of that duty. 
This power of Congress can never be evaded or destroyed by any transfer to 
trustees made by officers created by our own law, whether the transfer be 
leo-al or illegal. Our power attaches to such trustees, and will continue until 
they shall have closed the concerns of the bank. 

The gentleman says that the power to create a bank is one implication, 
and that to wind it up is a second implication, and to pass this bill would be 
piling implication upon implication, like Pelion upon Ossa, which cannot be 
done under the Constitution. Now, sir, to what absurdities does not tliis 
artrument lead ? By implication you can create a bank for a limited period, 
which you cannot destroy after that period has expired. Your creature, the 
term of whose existence you have foreordained, becomes eternal in defiance of 
your power. And this because you cannot add implication to implication. 
The gentleman asks where do you find this winding up power in the Consti- 
tution ? I answer, wherever he finds the creating power. The one neces- 
sarily results from the other. If not, when you call a bank into existence, its 
charter, although limited to a few years, becomes in fact perpetual. You 
cannot create that which you cannot destroy, after it has lived its appointed 

time. 

As to Mr. Gallatin and ilr. Brockenbrough— nobody pretends you can 
touch them or their banks by your law. The bill is confined to your own 
ao-ents, acting under your own law, and therefore subject to your own juris- 
diction. These agents are as much yours for the purpose proposed by the 
bill, as the president and directors of the old bank would have been. There 
is a perfect privity, as the lawyers would say, between the two ; nay, there 
is a perfect identity. It is no argument to say that the old bank is dead ; but 
even this is not the fact. We have extended its existence at the present ses- 
sion, without a dissenting voice, in either House, for the purpose of prosecut- 
ing and defending its suits, and it has always continued to elect a president 
and board of directors. 

The Senator has asked, if the Bank of England or any of the banks m 
Canada had ceased to exist, and their agents in this country should reissue 
their old notes, whether we would claim the power of punishing them for 
that cause. This question, in my opinion, presents the only instance of haste 
and want of sufficient reflection in the gentleman's speech. There is no 
analogy between the two cases. Congress never created the Bank of Eng- 
land, nor any bank in Canada, and therefore Congress can never claim any 
power to close their concerns. We assert no power except over our owti 



448 LIFE' OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

bank and its trustees. We cannot interfere with the banks of the several 
States, much less with those of a foreign country. 

The Senator thinks he has caught me in a palpable inconsistency. He 
says I first condemned the expansion of the banks in this country, and after- 
wards condemned the contraction of the Bank of England. I might have 
done so in the special case of the refusal of that bank to extend its accus- 
tomed credits to the American houses, without any inconsistency; but I 
expressed no opinion of my own upon the subject. In stating the causes 
which produced the suspension of specie payments in the United States, I 
said that this act of the Bank of England had been condemned in that country 
both by their statesmen and men of business. I passed no censure whatever 
on the conduct of that bank, and the gentleman, therefore, need not have 
reminded me that it would but little regard my censure. I am content to 
confine my humble exertions to our own institutions at home, leaving to other 
gentlemen the glory of having South America on one side of the Atlantic and 
Greece on the other, shouting hosannas in their praise. 

The gentleman asks, with a triumphant air, where are England and France 
at the present moment ? Are they not prosperous, whilst we are embarrassed ? 
In regard to England, I answer that money there is plenty and cheap ; and 
this simply because business has been paralyzed by the great convulsion 
under which we have both suffered ; and it is the capital which has been 
thrown out of active employment, from this very cause, which is now seeking 
investment at a low rate of interest. The commerce and trade of England 
have fallen off to such an extent that Parliament has been obliged to borrow 
two millions sterUng to meet the current expenses of the Government. In 
this particular they are placed in a similar situation with ourselves. And 
yet after all the light which has been shed upon this subject, the gentleman 
still attributes that convulsion which has shaken the commercial world to 
its centre, to the removal of the deposits, the Specie Circular, and General 
Jackson. 

I have but lately turned prophet ; and there has been such poor success in 
that line on this side of the House, that I have almost determined to abandon 
the trade forever. In one respect I resemble the false prophets of old, because 
they prophesied nothing but good. This may probably result from my san- 
guine temperament, and my desire to look upon the bright side of human 
affairs. In my prophetic vision I have therefore never, like the gentleman, 
denounced war, pestilence, and famine against the country. 

The gentleman strongly condemns the members of the present cabinet. I 
am willing to accord to the President the privilege of selecting his own agents 
and advisers, without any interference on my part. When he, or they, shall 
recommend measures of which I disapprove, I shall exercise my right of op- 
posing them as an independent Senator. I do not believe that any evidence 
can be produced that the President and his cabinet are opposed to the credit 
system of the country. If this should ever appear, it will then be time enough 
for me to denounce such a policy. My instructions have prevented me from 



POLITICAL CHANGE IMPENDING. 449 

expressing my views at length upon this subject. They contain nothing, 
however, which forbid me from saying, nay I am only expressing their senti- 
ment when I assert, that a separation of the business of the Government 
from that of the banks would be one of the greatest blessings which could be 
conferred on the country. In releasing the banks from the Government, and 
the Government from the banks, the interests of both parties would be pro- 
moted, mutual jealousies and recriminations would be ended, and the cur- 
rency and business of the country would cease to be involved in the perpetual 
struggles which exist for political power. 

I might say much more in reply to the gentleman, but I forbear. 

Throiigli the session of 1839^0 the financial policy of Mr. 
Van Buren continued to be the same. Still the plan of the " In- 
dependent Treasury," as it was called, continued to occupy the 
attention of the Senate, and still Mr. Buchanan was among the 
ablest and steadiest of its supporters. On the 12th of January, 
1840, and again at the same session, on the 3d of March, he 
took a leading part in the discussion of these subjects. These 
seven years of political warfare on the relations of the General 
Government to the currency, commencing in 1833 and extend- 
ing into the year 1840, were a period of unexampled commer- 
cial distress ; and when tlie two parties arrayed their forces and 
named their candidates for the next election of a President, the 
Democrats, although in possession of official power, were in a 
position in which the prevailing public and private embarrass- 
ments could be charged by their adversaries as the direct conse- 
quence of their measures. A great political revolution was at 
hand. That victorious party which claimed to have been 
founded by Jefferson, which nearly thirty years before its 
present precarious situation had carried Madison through a war 
with England, which had by its forbearance made for Monroe 
" the era of good feeling," which had beaten the administration 
of the second Adams into the dust, which had twice elected 
Jackson and would have elected him a third time but for a 
sacred tradition of the Kepublic, which had enabled Jackson to 
name his successor, which filled the important offices and 
wielded the whole patronage of the Government, was now to 
be swept out of power by a popular tempest, such as the 
country had never known in a time of peace. It was broken 
in New York, it was broken in Pennsylvania, it was broken in 

I.— 29 



450 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

many other States wliieh for twelve years liad been among its 
strongholds. 

The summer and autumn of 1840 saw a popular excitement, 
in which there was nmch that history might condemn, but 
which tlie sober wisdom of history can both account for as 
natural, and regard as not unwholesome. There had come to 
be a feeling that the public men who had so long been entrusted 
with the Government of the country, and been sustained with 
so large a share of the popular contidence, who had been the 
peculiar friends of the people, whose party designation im- 
plied a democracy of a purer type, and a wider regard for the 
welfare of the masses, had grown inditferent to the general 
suftering. 

At first, the conrse of General Jackson towards the Bank of 
the United States, his vast popularity and the influence which it 
gave him, enabled him and his followers to maintain their 
power. Hardly had there ever been a popular confidence 
greater than that which was reposed in Jackson, through the 
whole of his conflict with a moneyed institution, which a great 
majority of the people of the United States regarded, with liim, 
as a dangerous instrument. But when year after year passed 
away and nothing was done for the relief of the prevailing 
embarrassment, when thousands had become bankrupt, when 
labor was unemployed or was remunerated in a depreciated and 
discredited currency, when the mercantile, the manutacturing, 
the agricultural classes were involved in a common distress, 
elements of political excitement, scarcely ever before combined, 
were united in a vague longing for a great political change. 
Then were to be seen the highest statesmen discussing before 
huge masses of the people the most profound questions of 
public finance and constitutional construction, and stump ora- 
tors of all degrees, sounding the depths of popular agitation. 
The songs, the mottoes, the cries, the emblems of the party 
which had adopted the name of Whigs, a name which, both in 
English history and in our own, had represented popular inter- 
ests against the prerogatives of government, were at once 
puerile and eflfective. They convey a scarcely intelligible mean- 
ing to the present generation, but to those who listened to and 
looked upon them, they expressed feelings and passions which 



THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION OF 1840. 451 

stirred the popular heart.* For once, the "Whigs had laid 
hold of a string, coarse indeed and rude, but which vibrated to 
every touch throughout the land with singular force. The 
divorce of the Government from all connection with the cur- 
rency, the disclaimer of all responsibility about the circulating 
medium which must be used by the people, the exclusive regard 
for the monetary concerns of the Government as distinguished 
from the monetary interests of the community, were arrayed by 
the Whigs as the favorite and pernicious doctrines of the party 
in power. In all this there was some injustice, but when does 
not popular suffering produce injustice ? 

The result of this upheaving of society was the election of 
General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, as President, and 
of John Tyler, of Virginia, as Vice President, by a majority 
of 114 electoral votes. Xever was a political defeat more over- 
whelming than the defeat of Mr. Yan Buren. He obtained 
but 60 out of the 234 electoral votes. Of the larger States, 
he held only Yirginia.f 

Mr. Buchanan's personal position was unaffected by this 
political change. He had been re-elected to the Senate in 
January, 1837, by a very large vote, and for a full term, which 
would not terminate until the 3d of March, 1843.+ When the 
political " campaign" of 1840 came on, he did his part, and did 
it valiantly, for the success of his party and the re-election of 
Mr. Van Buren. The detail of his exertions would not be 
interesting now. It is enough to say that in the arrangements 
of the public meetings held by his political associates in various 
States, he was much relied upon as an antagonist to the great 
Whig leaders, and was often in one sense pitted against Mr. 
Webster and Mr. Clay, although it was not the habit of the 
time for public men on opposite sides to encounter each other 
on the same platform. As a popular orator, there was no one 

* Subsequent generations will need a key to the "log-cabin" and the barrel of "hard 
cider," the shouts of " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," the long processions of trades, the 
enormous multitudes that gathered at the great open-air meetings. Omnia qucR vidi, the 
writer might say, and he might add with a variation, quorum pars minima fui. 

t The sixty electoral votes obtained by Mr. Van Buren were given by the States of 
New Hampshire, Virginia, South Carolina, lUinob, Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas. 

t In a letter from one of his friends, which lies before me, written at the time of his 
re-election, it is said that he was the first person who had been elected a second time to the 
Senate of the United States by the legislature of Pennsylvania. 



453 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

on tlie Democratic side who was listened to with more respect 
than Mr. Buchanan. But popular eloquence was not his forte. 
On the platform, as in the Senate, he was grave, earnest, per- 
spicuous and impressive : but he did not kindle the passions or 
arouse the enthusiasm of audiences : nor indeed was there much 
enthusiasm to be evoked in the defence of a cause against which 
almost all the elements of ardent popular feeling were at the 
command of its adversaries. 

Mr. Buchanan might have escaped from the Senate into the 
Cabinet of Mr. Yan Buren, if he had wished to do so. It was 
Mr. Van Buren's desire, in 1839, that Mr. Buchanan should 
become Attorney-General in his administration, to fill the 
vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Grundy. The cor- 
respondence between them discloses that Mr. Buchanan pre- 
ferred to remain in the Senate. 

[mR. van BUREX to MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington, Dec. 27th, 1839. 
Dear Sir; — 

The ofSce of Attorney-General of the United States has become vacant 
by the resignation of Mr. Grundy. Although I have no reason to suppose 
that it would be desirable to you to change your present position in the public 
service, I have nevertheless felt it to be my duty to offer the seat in my 
cabinet, which has thus been placed at my disposal, for your acceptance, and 
to assure you that it will afford me sincere pleasure to hear that it will be 
agreeable to you to accept it, a sentiment in which those who would be your 
associates, will, I am confident, cordially participate. 

Should you decide otherwise, the occasion will have been presented, and 
cheerfully embraced, to express the high sense I entertain of your talents, 
and also my confidence in your patriotism and friendship for the admin- 
istration. 

Please to let me hear from you at your earliest convenience, and believe 
me to be very respectfully and truly your friend and obedient servant, 

M. Van Buren. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MR. VAN BUREN.] 

Washington, Dec. 28th, 1839. 
Dear Sir: — 

I have received your note of yesterday evening, tendering to me the office 
of Attorney-General. Whilst I regard it, with grateful sensibility, as a distin- 
guished mark of your kindness and confidence, yet I prefer my position as a 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 453 

Senator from Pennsylvania to the Attorney-Generalship, high and honorable 
as it is justly considered. Nothing could induce me to waive this preference, 
except a sense of public duty ; and happily upon the present occasion, this 
presents no obstacle to the indulgence of my own incHnation. Devotedly 
attached, as I am, to the great principles upon which your administration has 
been conducted, I feel that I can render a more efficient support to these prin- 
ciples on the floor of the Senate than I could in an executive ofiSce, which, 
from its nature, would necessarily withdraw me, in a great degree, from the 
general politics of the country, and again subject me to the labors of the 
profession. 

Permit me to embrace this occasion of again respectfully reiterating my 
earnest desire that you would confer this appointment upon Judge Porter. 
I believe him to be eminently qualified to discharge the duties of the sta- 
tion ; and that it would be highly gratifying to the Democracy of Pennsyl- 
vania to be represented in your cabinet by a gentleman who enjoys so large 
a portion of their confidence. 

With the highest esteem, I remain very respectfully your friend, 

James Buchaxan. 

[to general porter.] 

Washington, May 30th, 1840. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I have received yours of the 28th inst., and it afforded me much 
pleasure. 

I have had a long and free conversation with Mr. Yan Buren this morn- 
ing on the subject of Pennsylvania politics. It was the first of the kind for 
some time. In the course of it I took occasion to read your letter to him, 
with which he was much gratified. 

I impressed upon him, in the same terms I used to yourself, the absolute 
necessity of union and harmony between the State and national administra- 
tion. I told him that if one portion of the party in Pennsylvania said they 
were for Paul, and another for Apollos, the great cause with which both 
Paul and Apollos were identified might be ruined. He expressed, as he ever 
has done, a great regard for you, and said he had given conclusive evidence 
of it by the appointment of Judge Blythe, and that he never had concealed 
the fact that this appointment was made to gratify your wishes. Upon a sug- 
gestion of mine, that an opportunity might probably be presented, on the 
4th of July, to manifest his regard for you by giving a toast in your favor, 
he said he doubted the policy of that course, both in regard to you and him- 
seF. That the better mode was for both to evince their feelings by their con- 
duct. He spoke freely of certain politicians in Philadelphia, and I have no 
doubt from what he said, that he will exert his influence in some manner to 
prevent them from any longer treating you unfairly. Upon the whole, I left 
him more convinced than I ever was before^ that he is your friend. He made 



454 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the very observation to me which I had made to you, that in the progress of 
the Presidential canvass, when the party became excited, the feehng which 
now existed against you in a few places would be entirely forgotten. Of this 
I am perfectly convinced, especiallij if the hill should pass imposing the restric- 
tions on the banks recommended in your January message. There is no man in 
the State who more ardently desires this result than myself, and none who 
will more endeavor to accomplish it. Devoted as I am to bank reform, from 
a conviction of its absolute necessity, and having always expressed the same 
opinion on this subject, publicly and privately, this bill would place a power- 
ful weapon in my hand. I shall have to visit Westmoreland County, on the 
business of my late brother-in-law's estate, very soon after the adjournment 
of Congress, and I am under the impression that I can do much good there. 
I shall be very much rejoiced indeed to hear of the passage of this bill. 

I have had a long and a strong talk with . I am confident 

his feelings towards you are not unkind. 

The resolution of the Senate, expressing their opinion in favor of the bank- 
rupt system will place me in an embarrassing position, should it pass the 
House. Had the legislature instructed me, I should obey Avith pleasure, 
because all my sympathies are in favor of the suffering debtors. If left to 
myself, my judgment is so much opposed to my feelings^ that I believe I 
should vote against the bill without making any speech. The expression of a 
legislative opinion would probably compel me to give my reasons for dissent- 
ing from their opinion. If there be a majority of the House in favor of the 
measure, why not change the expression of their opinion into instructions, 
and then I shall be reUeved from all responsibility on the subject. I made a 
long speech in opposition to the bankrupt bill during the first session of my 
service in Congress, 1821-2 ; and I have yet heard nothing materially to 
shake my ancient opinions, though I am still open to conviction. I have not 
yet heard from Mr. Espy. 

Ever your friend. 

Very respectfully, 

James Buchanan. 

[to general porter.] 

Senate Chamber, Washington, February 9, 1841. 
My Dear Sir: — 

The thh'd crash of the Bank of the United States so soon after its resump- 
tion has taken us all by surprise. I sincerely hope that it has made its last 
struggle, and may now go into final liquidation. Whilst I regret the sufi"erings 
to which its stockholders may be exposed, I yet believe that its dissolution is 
necessary to the prosperity of the country. As long as it shall continue to 
exist, it will continue to derange the business of the country, and produce 
again and again those revulsions to which we have been subjected. It has 
ever been a lawless institution, and has done what it pleased, knowing that 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 455 

to destroy it would subject the people to evils which they would be unwilling 
to encounter. We ought to rejoice that it has now destroyed itself. I most 
sincerely hope that you may take this view of the subject; and adhere 
strictly, as I have no doubt you will, to your opposition to permitting the 
banks to issue notes under five dollars. 

As a sincere friend, both personally and politically, I have deemed it to be 
my duty to make these suggestions, and I have no doubt you will receive 
them as they are intended. 

From your friend, sincerely, 

James Buchanan. 

[to general porter.] 

Washington, February 17, 1841. 
My Dear Sir : — 

Sitting "solitary and alone" in my private room, the thought has just 
struck me that I would address you a few lines. If I were capable of envying 
any man, I should envy the position in which you are now placed. The eyes 
of the Democracy of the whole Union are now directed towards you with 
intense anxiety; and all you have to do to render yourself an object of their 
respect and admiration is to adhere firmly to your avowed principles. That 
you will adopt this course, I have not the shadow of a doubt. 

To put down the Bank of the United States will be a measure of the 
greatest relief to the State. It has not strength enough to assist the people ; 
but must exist by borrowing money and crippling other institutions. If it 
were out of the way, the other State institutions might safely be left to the 
people of the State. And I firmly believe there would be no serious attempt 
to forfeit their charters. The Bank of the United States makes a merit of 
having loaned large sums to the State government, when, by this means, it 
has preserved its existence this long. It exchanged its own paper for what 
would command specie, and enable it to raise money abroad. Whilst, there- 
fore, I feel for the distress of those whom it has ruined, I believe its going 
into liquidation would be the best relief measure which could be adopted. It 
may occasion much suffering for the present ; but this will soon be over, and 
all may then again hope to see settled times. 

When I sat down, I wanted to say a word against small notes; but I 
am interrupted and must stop. 

Ever sincerely your friend, 

James Buchanan. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GEORGE G. LEIPER, ESQ.] 

Lancaster, October 33, 1841. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I most sincerely sympathize with you in your domestic afflictions, and 
trust that He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb may comfort and 
sustain your daughter in her distress. 



456 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I reciprocate your congratulations on our recent victory Avitb all my heart. 
It is a jrreat moral triumph. After the late Presidential election many, who 
had formerly felt an abiding confidence in the integrity and intelligence of 
the people, began to waver. The ridiculous mummeries which apparently 
bad an effect upon them Avere insults to their understanding. But nobly 
have they redeemed themselves, and have proved to the world that if they 
can be made to slumber over their rights for a moment, they are certain to 
awake with a firmer determination than ever to maintain them. Governor 
Porter has now a fine opportunity of distinguishing himself; and most 
ardently do I hope that he may embrace it. By doing his duty fearlessly, he 
will make a name for himself, which no other governor of Pennsylvania has 
ever yet enjoyed. On the other hand, should he falter, we shall lose the State, 
if not at the next election, at the nest gubernatorial contest. He must devote 
himself to reforming the administration of our internal improvements, and 
rendering them productive ; he must firmly resist any increase of the State 
debt. And if he does no more, he must veto every bill to create a new bank 
or renew the charter of an old one. These are principles on which the De- 
mocracy will insist. Besides, he ought to recommend and urge a thorough 
investigation of the Bank of the United States, and the Pennsylvania and 
other banks. The time has passed for consulting mere expediency ; and the 
Democratic party has risen again upon its principles, and it will continue to 
stand no longer than it maintains them. I do not think that the Presidential 
question to which you allude will occasion any serious embarrassment to the 
party. Throughout the Union, Avith the exception of Philadelphia, they all 
appear to be alive to the necessity of forbearance. "When the proper time 
shall arrive, the choice of a candidate will be made without serious difficulty ; 
because I believe that the candidates who will be the most prominent are all 
willing to yield their pretensions, if that should be found necessary to pro- 
mote the success of the great causes. 

Please to remember me, in the kindest terms, to your family, and believe 
me to be your friend sincerely, 

James Buchanan. 



[to MK. WILLIAM FLINX, JR.] 

"Washington, September 5th, 1S41. 
My Dear Sir:— 

I thank you for your kind and acceptable letter, and feel much gratified 
that the honest and incorruptible farmei-s of your county have expressed their 
approbation of my political course. To live in their esteem would be a high 
reward. 

The second bank bill, or "kite-flying fiscality," is now before President 
Tyler, and I have no doubt but that it will share the fate of its predecessor. 
Should the second veto be of a firm and manly character, precluding all hope 
of the establishment of a national bank during the present Presidential term, 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 457 

it will bo, as it ought to be, hailed with enthusiasm by the Democratic party. 
In Congress we shall pursue the straight line of political duty, and shall yield 
the measures of the President, so far as they may be in accordance with our 
principles, a cheerful and hearty support. As to President-making, we shall 
leave that to the people, where it ought to be left. 

I should be pleased to sec you established as the editor of a Democratic 
paper. That is a mucli more honorable and independent vocation than to be 
hanging about the public offices here as a subordinate clerk. Should you 
become the editor of the Mercury, however, whilst I am deeply sensible of 
your kindness, I would not wish you to bring out my name as a candidate 
for the Presidency. It is yet too soon to agitate this question in the public 
journals ; and any premature movement would only injure the individual it 
was intended to benefit. Besides, I have no ambitious longings on this sub- 
ject. Let events take their course ; and my only desire is, that at the proper 
time, the individual may be selected as our candidate, who will best promote 
the success of the party and its principles. 

I am rejoiced at our flattering prospects in Penasylvania. Should the 
Keystone State come " booming " into the Democratic line in October next, 
by a handsome majority, this auspicious event will do much to prostrate the 
present Whig party. 

With sentiments of regard, I remain your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

1841— 1842. 

DEATH OP PRESIDENT HARRISON— BREACH BETWEEN PRESIDENT TTLER 
AND THE "WHIGS — TYLER's VETOES — BUCHANAN'S REPLY TO CLAY ON 
THE VETO POWER — HIS OPPOSITION TO THE BANKRTJPT ACT OF 1841. 

RARELY has a party in a constitutional government come 
into power with apparently a better prospect of doing 
good to their country, and retaining their hold upon it, than 
did the Whigs under President Harrison. This worthy man, 
who was by no means a statesman of the first or even of the 
second order, was a person of fair intelligence, of entire honesty 
of character, and was moderately w^ell taught in the principles 
of the Constitution, Almost his first act, after his election, was 
to tender the chief place in his cabinet to Mr. Webster. This 
was done with the concurrence of Mr. Clay, whom it suited to 
remain in the Senate, as its leader, and who expected to carry a 
new national bank, as a remedy for the existing disordered 
condition of the currency. 

But General Harrison died on the day which completed the 
first month of his official term.* His successor, John Tyler, of 
Virginia, had been chosen as Vice President, with very little 
attention to his political opinions on the part of those who 
selected him for that position, or of those w^ho voted for him. 
When he assumed the duties of the Presidency, he requested 
the members of General Harrison's cabinet to remain in office. 
They were all of that political school which regarded a national 
bank of some kind as a necessity, and held it to be an instru- 
ment of Government w^hicli Congress might constitutionally 
create. t President Plai-rison and his official advisers had 



* April 4th, 1S41. 

t The members of the Harrison cabinet were Daniel Webster, Secretary of State ; 
Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury ; John Bell, Secretary of War ; George E. Badger, 
Secretary of the Navy ; John J. Crittenden. Attorney General ; Francis Granger, Postmaster 
General. 



BREACH BETWEEN TYLER AND THE WHIGS. 459 

deemed it necessary to convene an extra session of Congress ; 
and his proclamation had summoned it for the 31st of May. 
When that day arrived, it began to be remembered that Mr. 
Tyler had theretofore been among those who denied the power 
of Congress to establish a national bank, and that as a Senator 
he had voted against one. Here, then, the long-cherished policy 
of the leading Whigs, Avhich they claimed had been affirmed by 
the people in the late election, was in peril of encountering the 
opposition of the President. In July, a bill for a bank, with 
power to establish offices of discount and deposit in the several 
States, either with or without their consent, was passed by both 
Houses and sent to the President. He returned it on the 16th 
of August, with his objections, from which it appeared that he 
held such a bank to be unconstitutional. In the Senate, Mr. 
Clay made a bitter attack upon the President ; the Whigs in the 
House of Representatives burst into a fury of indignation. 
But the Whig majority was not large enough to pass the bill 
over the President's " veto." A new bill to create a " Fiscal 
Corporation of the United States" was brought in. In the 
mean time the President was denounced in the press by persons 
who stood in close relations with Mr. Clay, as a man laithless to 
the party which had made him Vice President. In the debate 
on the new bill, Mr. Clay again assailed the President with 
great violence, expecting by that means to prevent a second 
" veto." Mr. Tyler remained firm to his own convictions ; the 
second " veto " came ; an irreparable breach between the 
Whio-s and the President ensued ; four of the members of the 
cabinet appointed by President Harrison resigned their places, 
without previous conference with Mr. Webster, who remained 
in office.* Thus within six months after the death of General 
Harrison, the Whigs lost the power of shaping the financial 
legislation of the country, which their triumphant success in the 
late election appeared to have given them. 

Mr. Buchanan, if not now the leader of the opposition in 
the Senate, was one of its most prominent debaters. It has 
already been said that he was not an orator, in the highest 



* For the reasons which led Mr. Webster to remain in office, see his Life, by the present 
•writer, vol. II., pp. 69 et seq. See farther, note on page 025 post. 



460 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sense of that term. But in all the polemics of debate lie was 
exceedingly eflficient. He could mingle logic with humor; 
and although in discussions which were largely occupied 
with party topics and with grave constitutional questions, he 
was not sparing in his thrusts, there was a gentleman-like 
manner in his wielding of the rapier, as well as force in handhng 
the weightier weapon of argument. On both of the bills which 
were prepared with a good deal of design to encounter the 
anticipated opposition of Mr. Tyler, and the last of which 
was almost avowedly gotten up as a means of " heading him 
off" from a union with the democratic opposition, Mr. 
Buchanan spoke at the extra session with remarkable energy 
and eifect. His most elaborate speech on the first bill was 
delivered on the 7th of July. It related partly to the old 
question of the constitutional power of Congress to create a 
national bank of any kind ; and in the course of this discussion 
he treated the topic of the binding authority of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, in reference to the legislative 
department, with new and forcible illustrations, contending that 
upon any new bank, Senators were bound to follow their con- 
scientious convictions. The residue of the speech was a severe 
criticism upon the details of the bill, which he contended would 
establish a dangerous connection between a moneyed institution 
and the executive of the United States, far worse than that 
which had existed in the case of either of the former banks. 
Such a speech was well calculated to produce a strong impres- 
sion at once upon the mind of the President before whom the 
bill was likely to come, and upon the country. Mr. Buchanan 
looked forward to the time when all question about a national 
bank, as a fiscal agent of the Government in the collection and 
disbursement of its revenues, would be at an end, and the 
" Independent Treasury " system would be resorted to as the 
substitute.* 

Upon the second bill he spoke on the 2d of September, in 
reply to Mr. Clay. This scheme of a " Fiscal Corporation of 
the United States," which was to have the power of dealing in 



message 



Speech delivered in the Senate July 7th, 1841. Compare President Tyler's veto 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841. 461 

bills of exchange drawn between different States, or on foreign 
countries, but was not to be allowed to discount promissory 
notes, was assailed by Mr. Buchanan with great vigor. His 
speech placed the advocates of the bill in a somewhat ridiculous 
position, for it did not appear whether they concurred in found- 
ing it on the power to regulate commerce, or on the power to 
collect and disburse the public revenue : and in the practical 
operation of the scheme, he made it very plain that it would 
become a mere " kite-flying " machine, Mr. Clay thought that 
Mr. Buchanan did not succeed in " attempts at wit." Buchanan 
retorted that this was true^ and that his opponent as rarely suc- 
ceeded in argument. An impartial reader would now say that 
Buchanan had the argument on his side, and a very respectable 
share of what was certainly a telling species of humor, if it was 
not wit. His description of the heterogeneous political mate- 
rials that made up the fimous "Harrisburg Convention,"^ — -the 
body which nominated Harrison and Tyler, with such an entire 
disregard of the opinions of the candidates that it became after- 
wards a disputed question whether they were " bank " or " anti- 
bank " men, — was not an unhappy hit.* 

Under the advice of Mr. Webster, the Whigs postponed the 
subject of a bank to the next regular session of Congress. 
But some important measures were passed at the extra session, 
and approved by the President, among which was a Bankrupt 
Act. Mr. Buchanan opposed it in the following speech, deliv- 
ered on the 2ith of July, 1841 : 

The question being on the passage of the bill — 

Mr. Buchanan said, that when he entered the Senate chamber this morn- 
ing, he had not intended to say one word on the subject of the bankrupt bill. 
He was content that the question should have been taken silently on its final 
passage, and decided in its favor, as all knew it would be, from the vote 
yesterday upon its engrossment. The able remarks of the Senator from New 
York (Mr. Tallmadge) had induced him to change his purpose, and endeavor 
to place himself in a proper position before the public in relation to this 
important measure. 

He trusted that he felt as much sympathy for the unfortunate as any 
Senator on this floor. It would, therefore, have afforded him heartfelt pleas- 
ure to be able to vote for this bill. He was sorry, very sorry, that from a 

* See the speech of Sept. 2, 1841. 



^g2 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

deep sense of public duty, he should be compelled to vote against it. Would 
to Heaven that this were not the case ! 

It had been asserted over and over again, that there were five hundred 
thousand bankrupts in the United States anxiously awaiting relief from the 
passage of this bill. Now, from the very nature of the case, this must be a 
monstrous exaggeration of the number of these unfortunate men. Less than 
two millions and a half of votes had been given at the late Presidential elec- 
tion ; and, if you add to this number five hundred thousand, the aggregate of 
three millions would exceed the number of all the male inhabitants of the 
United States who could by possibility become bankrupts. Could any man 
believe that half a million of this number were in a state of bankruptcy ? 
That every sixth man in the United States was in this wretched condition? 
The experience of us all must demonstrate that this was impossible. There 
were several States in the Union where this bill would be almost a dead letter 
for want of subjects on which it could operate. Although we had suffered 
much from the spirit of wild speculation, which had been excited to madness 
by our unrestricted banking system, yet he did not believe there were more 
than one hundred thousand bankrupts in the United States who would apply 
for relief under this bill 

Now, sir, what was the nature of this bill ? Whom did it embrace in its 
provisions ? He Avould answer, every individual in the United States who 
was an insolvent debtor. There was no limitation, no restriction whatever. 
It would discharge all the insolvent debtors now in existence throughout the 
Union, from all the debts which they had ever contracted, on the easiest 
terms possible. It was said that the bill contained provisions both for volun- 
tary and involuntary bankruptcy ; and so it did nominally : but in truth and 
in fact, it would prove tp be almost exclusively a voluntary bankrupt bill. 
The involuntary clause would scarcely ever be resorted to, unless it might 
be by a severe and vindictive creditor, for the purpose of unjustly oppressing his 
unfortunate debtor. And why would this prove in practice to be a voluntary 
bankrupt bill, and that alone ? The compulsory clause applied only to mer- 
chants—wholesale and retail, to bankers, factors, brokers, underwriters, and 
marine insurers. These were objects of compulsory bankruptcy, provided 
they owed debts to the amount of two thousand dollars. In order to enable 
their creditors to prosecute petitions against them, for the purpose of having 
them declared bankrupt, they must have committed one of the acts of bank- 
ruptcy specified by the bill What were they? The debtor must either 
have departed from the State of his residence, with intent to defraud his 
creditors ;— or concealed himself to avoid being arrested ; — or fraudulently 
procured himself to be arrested or his goods or lands to be attached, distrained, 
sequestered, or taken in execution ; — or removed and concealed liis goods and 
chattels to prevent them from being levied upon or taken in execution ;— 
or made a fraudulent conveyance or assignment of his lands, goods, or credits. 
These were the five acts of bankruptcy specified in the bill ; and could it be 
supposed that any merchant or man of business, in insolvent circumstances, 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841. 463 

would wait and subject himself to this compulsory process by committing any 
of these acts ; whilst the bill threw the door wide open to him, in common 
with all other persons, to become a voluntary bankrupt, at any time he might 
think proper ? He would select the most convenient time for himself to be 
discharged from his debts ; and would cautiously avoid any one of these acts 
of bankruptcy, which might restrain the freedom of his own will, and place 
him in some degree within the power of his creditors. He would "swear 
out" when it suited him best, and would not subject himself to their pleasure. 
This bill, then, although in name compulsory as well as voluntary, was in fact, 
from the beginning to end, neither more nor less than a voluntary bankrupt law. 

Now it might be wise, on a subject of such great importance, to consult the 
experience of the past. In 1817, the British Parliament had appointed a 
commission on the subject of their bankrupt laws. The testimony taken by 
the commissioners was decidedly against these laws ; and the Lord Chancellor 
declared that the abuses under them were a disgrace to the country ; that it 
would be better to repeal them at once than to submit to such abuses ; and 
that there was no mercy to the bankrupt's estate nor to the creditors. Mr. B. 
spoke from memory ; but he felt confident he was substantially correct in the 
facts stated. This was the experience of England, and that, too, notwith- 
standing their bankrupt laws had interposed many more guards against fraud 
than the present bill contained, and were executed with an arbitrary severity, 
wholly unsuited to the genius of our institutions. In that country, however, 
these laws had existed for so long a period of time, and were so interwoven 
with the business habits of the people, that it was found impossible to abolish 
them altogether. 

We have had some experience on this subject in our own country. Con- 
gress passed a bankrupt law in April, 1800. It was confined to traders, and 
was exclusively compulsory in its character. The period of its existence was 
limited to five years and until the end of the next session of Congress tliere- 
after. It so entirely failed to accomplish the objects for which it was created, 
and was the source of so many frauds, that it was permitted to Hve out but 
little more than half its appointed days. It was repealed in December, 1803; 
and a previous resolution, declaring that it ought to be repealed, passed the 
House of Representatives by a vote of 77 to 12. 

The State of Pennsylvania had furnished another important lesson on this 
subject. In March, 1812, the legislature of that State passed a bankrupt or 
insolvent law absolving all those who chose to take advantage of it from the 
payment of their debts. It was confined to the city and county of Philadel- 
phia ; but within these limits, like the present bill, it offered relief to every- 
body who desired to be relieved. This act was repealed, almost by acclama- 
tion, at the commencement of the very next session after its passage. Its 
baneful efiects were so fully demonstrated during this short intervening period, 
that the representatives from the city and county who had, but a few months 
before, strained every nerve to procure its passage, were the most active 
and zealous in urging its repeal. 



464 T-IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

During the first session of bis service in the House of Representatives (that 
of 1821-2), powerful efforts were made to pass a bankrupt law. There was 
then a greater and more general necessity for such a measure than had ever 
existed since. The extravagant expansion of the Bank of the United States 
in 1816, '17 and '18 had reduced it to the very brink of insolvency. In order 
to save itself from ruin, it was compelled to contract its loans and issues with 
a rapidity beyond all former example. The consequence was, that the years 
1819, '20 and '21 were the most disastrous which the country had ever 
experienced since the adoption of the federal Constitution. Not only mer- 
chants and speculators were then involved in ruin ; but the rage for specula- 
tion had extended to the farmers and mechanics throughout the country, and 
had rendered vast numbers of them insolvent. The cry for relief, by the 
passage of a bankrupt bill, therefore, came to Congress from all classes of 
society, and from almost every portion of the Union. 

The best speech which he (Mr. B.) had ever made in Congress was in 
opposition to that bill. The reason was, that he had derived much assistance 
from conversations with Mr. Lowndes upon the subject. That great and good 
statesman was then suffering under the disease which proved fatal to him soon 
after. He attempted to make a speech against the bill, but was compelled to 
desist by physical exhaustion before he had fairly entered on his subject. It 
was his decided conviction, that no bankrupt law, of which the English 
system was the model, could ever be adopted by Congress without great 
injury to the country. He (Mr. B.) had attempted to demonstrate this propo- 
sition, at that period, and he should now again, after tlie lapse of nearly 
twenty years, make a very few observations on the same subject. 

And in the first place, it would be physically impossible for the district 
courts of the United States to carry tliis law into execution ; and if it were 
even possible, it would be extremely burdensome and oppressive to the people 
generally. 

The bill prescribes that all applicants for its benefit shall file their petitions 
in the district court of the district in which they reside. Twenty days' notice 
only is required, and that not to be served personally on the creditors, but 
merely by newspaper publication. At the time and place appointed, the 
creditors of the applicant may appear and show cause why the prayer of his 
petition should not be granted. If there be no appearance on the part of the 
creditors, or sufiicient cause be not shown to the contrary, then the court 
decree the applicant to be a bankrupt ; and tlms ends the first stage of the 
proceedings, so far as he is personally concerned. 

After such apphcant has been thus declared a bankrupt, and has complied 
with all the provisions of the act, he may then file another petition to be dis- 
charged from his debts, which may be granted at any time after ninety days 
from the date of the decree declaring him a bankrupt. Seventy days' notice 
is to be given to his creditors to appear in court, and oppose his discharge, if 
tliey think proper. 

It thus appeared that there might be two formal hearings in each case 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841. 4G5 

before the district court upon every application ; and tbat there would be, in 
many of the cases, was beyond a doubt. Besides, from the very nature of 
the proceedings in bankruptcy, and from the provisions of the bill, the inter- 
locutory applications, and the examinations of the bankrupt before the court, 
must be very numerous. At every stage of the proceedings a large portion 
of the time of the court must necessarily be devoted to the subject. 

Should the district court decide that the bankrupt shall not be discharged, 
he might then demand a trial by jury, or appeal from this decision to the cir- 
cuit court. This would be another prolific fountain of business for the district 
and circuit courts of the United States. 

Thus far the proceeding was confined to the bankrupt personally. But 
before what court was his estate to be settled ? By the terms of the bill, 
the demands of all creditors of the bankrupt, if disputed, must be tried in the 
district court ; the controversies which might arise between the creditors and 
the assignees of the bankrupt, and also between the bankrupt himself and his 
assignees, must be settled in the district court ; and, to use the comprehen- 
sive terras of the bill, the jurisdiction of that court was extended " to all acts, 
matters, and things to be done under and in virtue of the bankruptcy, until 
the final distribution and settlement of the estate of the bankrupt, and the 
close of the proceedings in bankruptcy." 

There were also several criminal offences created by the bill ; all of which 
must be tried in the district courts of the United States. 

From the nature of the federal Constitution, all the business which he had 
enumerated must necessarily be transacted in the courts of the United States. 
It could not be transferred to the State courts. 

Now, sir, said Mr. B., this bill will prove to be a fdo de se. It can never 
be carried into effect, for want of the necessary judicial machinery. Another 
midnight judiciary must be established, to aid bankruptcy. The number of 
these midnight judges which were added to the federal judiciary in February, 
1801, was eighteen ; and if these were necessary at that time, three times the 
number would not be sufficient at present. 

He had just examined McCullough's Commercial Dictionary, under the title 
Bankruptcy. He there found that the annual number of commissions of 
bankruptcy opened in England on an average of nine years, ending with the 
year 1830, was a little below seventeen hundred. The average annual number 
of all the commissions which issued during the same period, was about two 
thousand one hundred. One-half of these seventeen hundred cases were what 
are called town cases, and the other half country cases. To transact the town 
business alone, consisting of eight hundred and fifty cases annually, it had 
been found necessary to establish a new court of bankruptcy, similar to the 
ancient courts at Westminster Hall, consisting of one chief judge, and three 
puisne judges. To this court there were attached six commissioners, two 
principal registrars, and eight deputy registrars. Such was the judicial force 
found necessary in England to examine and decide upon the cases of seven 
hundred and fifty bankrupts in each year. 

I.— 30 



4G6 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Then what provision had the present bill made to discharge half a million 
of bankrupts, the number which its friends assert exist at present in the 
United States ? None whatever, except to cast this burden upon the district 
courts of the United States, which, in the large commercial cities, where the 
cases of bankruptcy must chiefly be heard, had already as much business as 
they could conveniently transact. The courts could not transact all this busi- 
ness, if there were half a million of bankrupts to be discharged, within the 
next twenty years. Sir, unless you establish new courts, and increase your 
judicial force at least ten fold, it is vain for you to pass the present bill. 
Without this, the law can never be carried into effect. The moment it goes 
into operation, these unfortunate bankrupts will rush eagerly to the district 
courts in such numbers as to arrest all other judicial business. This bill pro- 
vides that these courts shall be considered open every day in the year, for 
the purpose of hearing bankrupt cases. 

The district courts of the United States were scattered over the Union at 
great distances from each other. For example, there were in the State of 
New York, he believed, but two of these courts. In Pennsylvania, one was 
held in Philadelphia, another in Pittsburg, and a third in Williamsport. Pitts- 
burg and Philadelphia were three hundred miles apart; and parties, jurors, 
and witnesses must constantly be in attendance from great distances at these 
two places, on the hearing of the different bankrupts, and on the trial of all 
the causes which might arise out of the settlement of their estates. By the 
operation of this bill, all these causes would and must be transferred from the 
State to the Federal courts. This would be an intolerable oppression to the 
people. 

Without entering into any detail of the frauds to which this bill would 
give birth, he must be permitted to advert to the effect which it would have 
upon the rights of creditors in States distant from the court where the debtor 
might make his application. It would speedily sponge away all the indebted- 
ness, now very great, of the Southwestern portfon of the Union to the Eastern 
cities. Our merchants in those cities, should the bill pass, would have no 
difficulty in balancing their books. This would be done for them by the bill 
in the easiest possible manner. 

Under all other bankrupt laws which had ever existed, or ever been pro- 
posed, either in this country or in England, or anywhere else, as he believed, 
the debtor could not obtain his certificate of discharge without the express 
written assent of a certain proportion of his creditors in number and value. 
This rule had never been found to operate severely in practice on honest 
debtors, whilst it afforded some security to the creditors. Under the present 
bankrupt laws of England, the certificate of discharge must be signed by four- 
fifths in number and value of the creditors of the bankrupt ; and under our 
old bankrupt law of 1800, two-thirds in number and value of the creditors 
were required to sign. Without this express assent, no bankrupt could 
receive his certificate of discharge. But the present bill had completely 
reversed this rule. Under it the debtor must be discharged, "unless a majority 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841. 4G7 

in number and value of his creditors, who have proved their debts, shall 
file their written dissent thereto." Now he should put a case ; and many 
such would occur under the present bill. A merchant in Philadelphia had a 
debtor in Mississippi, who owed him $20,000. This debtor applies to the 
district court of that State for the benefit of the act. The merchant believes 
he has been guilty of fraud, and determines to oppose his discharge. He goes 
or sends to Mississippi for this purpose. I ask you, sir, what chance he would 
have to obtain the necessary proof, in a country Avhere thousands were at the 
same time applying for the benefit of the bankrupt law. The task would be 
hopeless ; and consequently the attempt would be made in very few cases. 
Had the law required the express assent of two-thirds or even a majority in 
number and value of the bankrupt's creditors, the merchant would have had 
one security left. The debtor must have satisfied him that he had acted hon- 
estly before he could have obtained his assent. Now the debtor would be 
discharged unless a majority expressly dissent. The ancient rule had been 
reversed ; and instead of an express assent being required to produce his dis- 
charge, there must now be an express dissent to prevent it. And if the 
majority did dissent, what would be the consequence ? Was this conclusive, 
and would the debtor still remain liable? No, sir, no. The Philadelphia mer- 
chant would then have to enter upon a new law suit. Notwithstanding this 
express dissent, the question would, under the bill, be referred to a jury, 
and if they decided in the bankrupt's favor, he was discharged from his 
debts forever, even against the dissent of all his creditors. This jury would 
necessarily be composed of his own neighbors, all having a sympathetic feeUng 
with him, and looking upon the distant Philadelphia creditor as an unjust and 
an unfeeling man. This was a natural feeling, and common to almost all men 
in similar circumstances. It implied no imputations upon their honesty. 
Truly this bill was a measure to relieve all debtors who might desire to cut 
loose from their debts, without any adequate provision for the security of 
creditors. 

But all these evils were nothing when compared with the baneful effects 
which the bill would have upon the morals of the people of this country. 
Our people were already too much addicted to speculation, and too anxious 
to become suddenly rich. As a nation, we required the rein and the bit much 
more than the spur. The present bill would stimulate the spirit of specula- 
tion almost to madness. Men would be tempted by the hope of realizing 
rapid fortunes, and living in affluence the remainder of their days, to embark 
in every wild undertaking, knowing that they had everything to gain and 
nothing to lose. This bill proclaimed not merely to merchants and insurers, 
whose business was from its nature hazardous; but to every citizen of the 
United States, " you may be as wild and extravagant in your speculations as 
you please — you may attempt to seize the golden prize in any manner you 
choose : if you succeed you will then possess what your heart most desires; 
if not, your debts shall be blotted out in the easiest manner possible, and you 
may begin the world again." This was in effect the language of the bill. 



468 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The consequence must be that the faith of contracts would soon become an 
idle word. Our former bankrupt law was wholly compulsory in its charac- 
ter, and was confined to traders. The present English bankrupt law expressly 
excludes farmers and graziers from its provisions. We went a long distance 
in advance of both. The present bill Avould be in effect wholly voluntary, 
and it embraced everybody under the sun, and all debts which had been, or 
might be, contracted. 

He would venture to predict, that when this bill should go into operation 
the people of the United States would soon become astonished and alarmed 
at its consequence : and it would be blotted out of existence in less time than 
had elapsed between the passage and repeal of the act of 1800. 

He might be asked if he were opposed to a bankrupt law in any form. 
He could answer that he was not. He Avould most cheerfully vote for any 
safe measure of this nature which could be carried into execution by the 
courts of the United States, and he did not believe that it would be very diffi- 
cult to frame such a measure. The judicial system of the Federal Govern- 
ment was of such a character, that it could never execute a bankrupt law, 
modelled after the English system, without producing great fraud, delay, and 
injustice. If you changed this system, and increased the number of courts 
and judges, so as to enable them to transact the business under this bill, with 
proper deliberation and within a reasonable time, you would go far towards 
producing a judicial consolidation of the Union. It was the opinion of Mr. 
Lowndes, that we should be compelled to abandon the idea of framing a bill 
upon the English model, and adopt the system which prevailed in countries 
subject to the civil law. For example, he (Mr. B.) would permit a debtor in 
failing circumstances to make any composition he could obtain from a major- 
ity or two-thirds in number and value of his creditors. In that event, he 
would discharge him from his debts as against the remainder, unless they 
could prove that he had been guilty of fraud. He would never place any unfor- 
tunate, but honest debtor, in the power of a few vindictive creditors against 
the will of the majority. Such a law would, in a great degree, execute 
itself, and dispense with nearly all the machinery of this bill. The composi- 
tion between the debtor and his creditors, and his assignment of his property 
for the benefit of them all, which he should consider indispensable, might be 
filed in the district court, and receive its sanction. He Avould not take time 
at present to do more than hint at the nature of the bankrupt law, which he 
thought would be applicable to this country. It would- very much resemble 
the cessio honorum which now prevailed in Louisiana, where the civil and not 
the common law governed the proceedings of the courts. 

But what great and overruling necessity existed for Congress to pass any 
bankrupt law? Each State could now pass bankrupt laws, which would 
relieve their citizens from the obligation of debts contracted with other citi- 
zens of the same State subsequent to the passage of such iaws. This point 
had been solemnly adjudged by the Supreme Court of the United States, in 
the case of Ogden vs. Saunders, reported in 12th Wheaton, 213; and its 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841. 469 

authority was confirmed in the case of Boyle vs. Zacharie, reported in 
6 Peters, 635. 

This discharge, however, would be confined to debts contracted between 
citizens of the same State where the discharge was granted. The decision 
rested on the principle, that the State law under which the discharge would 
take place, had become a part of the original contract, in the contemplation 
of the parties. But if a citizen of Pennsylvania had loaned money to a 
citizen of New York, who should afterwards take the benefit of a bankrupt 
law existing in the latter State, this would not discharge the debt; but the 
Pennsylvanian might, notwithstanding, recover the amount due fiom the 
New Yorker, in either the federal or State courts. But, even in such a case, 
if the Pennsylvania creditor should accept his dividend of the estate of the 
New York debtor, he would then be bound for ever, and the debt would 
be discharged. [Vide the case of Clay vs. Smith, 3 Peters, 411.] Foreign 
creditors would, in almost every instance, accept such dividends, if they 
amounted to anything considerable ; and this would be an encouragement for 
debtors, in failing circumstances, not to struggle on till all their property was 
gone, but to surrender it while something remained for the general creditors. 
Thus, then, it was clear that the States could provide for all prospective cases, 
and could enact bankrupt laws which would have the same force and effect 
between their own citizens as though they had been passed by Congress. 
Besides, the State courts, established in every county, could carry those laws 
into effect with promptitude, and without inconvenience to the people. 

A thought had struck him at the moment. Why might not Congress 
declare by law that a discharge under all State bankrupt laws should be as 
effectual against citizens of other States as they could be against citizens of 
the same State ? This would render the system complete in regard to future 
debts, without any furtlier interposition of Congress. He would not say that 
we possessed the power, under the Constitution, to pass such a law, because 
he had never considered the subject ; but, if we did, it would be the best 
mode in which we could exercise our power over bankruptcy. Every State 
would then be left at liberty to adopt the policy in relation to bankrupts 
required by its own peculiar circumstances, and to execute the laws which 
operated chiefly upon the domestic concerns of its own citizens according to 
its own discretion. 

Mr. B. said, as he had referred to the speech which he had made in the 
House of Representatives on this subject, nearly twenty years ago, he felt 
bound to acknowledge that, upon one point, he had fallen into a then prevail- 
ing error. Of this he had been fully convinced by the debate in the Senate 
at the last session. In 1822, it was his opinion that the constitutional power 
of Congress was confined to traders, or that class of persons which were 
embraced by the bankrupt laws of England at the time of the adoption of 
the Federal Constitution. This he now believed was too narrow a construc- 
tion. The Constitution declared that " Congress shall have power to establish 
uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies, tliroughout the United States." 



470 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The subject of bankruptcies was thus placed generally under our control ; 
and wherever bankruptcy existed, no matter what might have been the pur- 
suits of the bankrupt, whether he had been a trader or not, our power 
extended over him. It also, in his opinion, embraced artificial as well as 
natural persons. Was it not absurd to say, that an individual manufacturer 
on one side of the street at Lowell might be subjected to the compulsory 
operation of a bankrupt law ; whilst two or three individual manufacturers 
on the other side of the same street, who had obtained a charter of incor- 
poration from the legislature of Massachusetts, could thus withdraw them- 
selves in their corporate capacity from the power conferred upon Congress 
over bankruptcies? He, therefore, entertained no doubt of the power of 
Congress to pass a compulsory bankrupt law against banks. If it could not 
pass such a law, a firm of individual bankers would be embraced by our 
power; but if these very individuals obtained a charter of incorporation, 
they might then place that power at defiance. He entertained as little doubt 
of the policy of such a law as applied to banks. The knowledge of its exist- 
ence would of itself, in almost every instance, prevent the necessity of its 
application. Banks, tlien, in order to save themselves from destruction, would 
take care to conduct their business in such a manner as always to be able to 
pay their liabilities in specie. He indulged no hope of a permanently sound 
convertible paper currency except what arose from the power of Congress to 
subject banks to a bankrupt law. This was the only practicable method 
which could be devised of securing to the people this great blessing. 

Mr. B. thought it might be shown that this bill was deficient in its details. 
He Avould now only refer to one particular. It dispensed with the use of 
commissioners of bankruptcy altogether. In this respect it was a departure 
from the English statute of bankruptcy, and from our own act of 1800. Now 
whilst he admitted that compulsory bankruptcy would rarely occur under this 
bill, unless it might be to gratify the malignity of a severe creditor ; yet he 
asked the chairman of the committee (Mr. Berrien) to say what would become 
of the debtor's property between the time which would intervene between 
filing the petition against him by the creditor, and the final decree of the court 
declaring him a bankrupt. The debtor might require a trial by jury before the 
court to ascertain the fact whether or not he had committed an act of bank- 
ruptcy. This trial might, and probably would, often be delayed for years, 
whilst it ought to proceed immediately. What was to become of the debtor's 
property in the mean time, without commissioners ? Was he to be left to 
squander it at pleasure ? On the other hand, if the petitioning creditor should 
proceed without sufficient cause, the act of 1800 gave the debtor a remedy 
against him. He Avas bound, before the commission was sued out, to give 
bond, with such surety as the court might direct, conditioned that the obligor 
should prove the debtor to be a bankrupt. In case of failure, the debtor had 
his remedy on the bond to the amount of the injury he might have sustained, 
in case the condition of it had been violated. Surely this was no more than 
justice. After the debtor had been arrested in the pursuit of his business by 



SPEECH ON THE BANKRUPT ACT. 471 

a charge of bankruptcy— after his prospects in life had been blasted— after his 
credit had been destroyed— and aaer he had been pursued for years in a 
course of litigation which eventually terminated in his favor, justice required 
that he should have some remedy. He asked, therefore, why these provisions 
of the act of 1800 had been left out of the present bill ? 

It had been contended that as the Constitution had conferred upon Con- 
gress the power to pass a bankrupt law, it was therefore their duty to exercise 
this power. But pov/er was one thing and duty another. The language of 
power was that you may — of duty that you must. The Constitution had also 
conferred upon Congress the power of declaring war, of imposing taxes, and 
of raising and supporting armies ; but would any Senator contend that it was 
our duty to give life and energy to these powers by calling them into action, 
unless the interest or honor of the country demanded it at our hands ? These 
sovereign powers were to be exercised or not, according to the dictates of a 
sound discretion ; and we were under no obligation whatever to pass a bank- 
rupt law, unless we believed that under all the circumstances of the country, 
such a law would promote the best interests of the people. 

Upon the whole, he could declare that such was his sympathy for these 
unfortunate debtors, that he had never given a vote in his life more disagree- 
able to his feelings than the vote which he should be compelled to give upon 
the present occasion. He was convinced, however, that the bill, in its effects, 
would prove disastrous to the people ; and, therefore, although reluctantly, he 
should record his vote against its passage. 

At the session which commenced in December, 1 841, a meas- 
ure in which President Tyler and his cabinet had united was 
recommended to Congress. It proposed the establishment of 
an " Exchequer Board," to consist of certain Government offi- 
cers and other commissioners, with branch agencies in the dif- 
ferent States. As it never took effect, it is only needful to refer 
to Mr. Buchanan's description of it in a speech made on the 
29th of December, from which it appears that he regarded it as 
only another form of a Government bank. lie professed his 
readiness to concur with the President in any unobjectionable 
measure confined to the collection, safe-keeping, and disburse- 
ment of the public money, " in the hope that, after all experi- 
ments should have been tried, and reason should have time to 
prevail, the people and the Government would at length return 
to and re-establish the Independent Treasury."* But as the 
Senate continued to be occupied through the winter of 1841-2 

* Speech of December 39, 1811. 



473 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

with the discussion of these subjects of finance, Mr. Clay kept 
on in his bitter criticisms of the President's "vetoes" of bills 
which had been passed by those who had, as he claimed, be- 
stowed on Mr. Tyler the office that had made him the succes- 
sor of General Harrison. Mr. Clay went so far as to propose a 
joint resolution for an amendment of the Constitution, so as 
to require but a bare majority of all the members of each house 
to pass any bill into a law, notwithstanding the objections of 
the President. That he really expected to bring about such a 
chanire in the fundamental rule which had alone made the 
President's negative of any practical value, may be doubtful. 
He was then looking for a nomination to the Presidency by 
the next national convention of the Whigs, and this proposal 
to curtail the "veto" power would probably be, under the 
circumstances of the times, a popular topic on which to make 
his canvass against the Democratic party. It is, perhaps, to be 
regretted that Mr. Webster was not in the Senate at this time ; 
but as he was not, it is fortunate that Mr. Buchanan was.'^ 
Notwithstanding the many differences of opinion between these 
two statesmen, on the scope of the legislative powers of Con- 
gress, I regard it as certain that they would not have differed 
in their views of the fundamental purpose of the Constitution 
in requiring two-thirds of each House to pass a bill over the 
President's objections. Great and eminent as were Mr. Web- 
ster's powers of understanding and enforcing the principles of 
the Constitution, and commanding as was his reputation, Mr. 
Buchanan was an equally conscientious and careful student of 
that instrument, and equally faithful to its great purposes. His 
speech on the veto power, in reply to Mr. Clay, delivered on 
the 2d of February, 1842, may be ranked very high as an ex- 
position of one of the most important parts of our political sys- 
tem. There is a good deal in it of the temporary and party 
controversies of that period ; and there is also a great deal of 
sound and comprehensive reasoning, valuable now and here- 
after. 

Mr. President : I am now sorry that I ever committed n}yse]f to make a 
speech upon this subject. I assure you that it has become extremely cold ; 

* Compare what Mr. Webster has said on the veto power. 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 473 

and I think I never shall again pledge myself to address the Senate at the end 
of a Aveek or ten days, to be occupied in the discussion of an intervening and 
diflferent question. Cold as the subject had become, it is now still colder, after 
having waited for an hour to hear a debate on the mere reference of a memo- 
rial to the Committee on Commerce. But although the subject may have lost 
its freshness to my mind, and I may not be able to reply to the Senator from 
Kentucky (Mr. Clay) with as much effect as if the discussion on the bankrupt 
bill had not intervened, yet it has lost none of its intrinsic importance. 

Before I commence the discussion, however, let me clearly and distinctly 
state the question to be decided by the Senate. 

Under the Constitution of the United States, as it now exists — 

" Every bill which shall have passed the House of Eepresentatives and the 
Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the 
United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, 
with his objections, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall 
enter the objections at large on their journal and proceed to reconsider it. Jf 
after such reconsideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it 
shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall 
likewise he reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall 
become a law. But, in all such cases, the votes of both Houses shall be deter- 
mined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against 
the bill, shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any 
bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) 
after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like man- 
ner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress, by their adjournment, prevent 
its return, in which case it shall not be a law." 

The same constitutional rule is applicable to " every order, resolution or 
vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Ptepresentatives 
may be necessary, except on a question of adjournment." 

The joint resolution offered by the Senator, proposes to change the existing 
Constitution, so as to require but a bare majority of all the members belonging 
to each House to pass any bill into a law, notwithstanding the President's 
objections. 

The question then is, whether the Constitution ought to be so amended as 
to require but a bare majority of all the members of each House, instead of 
two-thirds of each House, to overrule the President's veto ; and, in my 
opinion, there never was a more important question presented to the Senate, 
Is it wise, or is it republican, to make this fundamental change in our institu- 
tions ? 

The great Whig party of the country have identified themselves, in the 
most solemn manner, with this proposed amendment. Feeling sensibly, by 
sad experience, that they had suffered since the late Presidential election, from 
not having previously presented a clear exposition of their principles " to the 
public eye," they determined no longer to suffer from this cause. Accord- 
ingly, the conscript fathers of the church assembled in convention at the city 



474 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

of Washington, on the 13th September last— at the close of the ever memor- 
able extra session — and adopted an address to the people of the United States. 
This manifesto contains a distinct avowal of tlae articles of their creed ; and, 
first and foremost among them all, is a denunciation of the veto power. I shall 
refer very briefly to this address ; although to use the language of my friend, 
the present Governor of Kentucky, it contains much good reading. So 
exasperated were the feehngs of the party then, and so deeply were they 
pledged to the abohtion of the veto power, that they solemnly and formally 
read John Tyler out of the Whig church, because he had exercised it against 
the bills to estabhsh "a fiscal agent " and a "fiscal corporation" of the United 
States. The form of excommunication bears a resemblance to the Declara- 
tion of Independence which severed this country forever from Great Britain. 
I shall give it in their own emphatic language. They declare that John 
Tyler— 

" By the course he has adopted in respect to the application of the veto 
power to two successive bank charters, each of which there was just reason to 
believe would meet his approbation ; by the withdrawal of confidence from 
his real friends in Congress and from the members of his Cabinet ; by the 
bestowal of it upon otliers notwithstanding their notorious opposition to lead- 
ing measures of his administration, has voluntarily separated himself from 
tliose by whose exertions and suflfrages he was elevated to that office through 
which he reached his present exalted station," etc. 

After a long preamble, they proceed to specify the duties which the Whig 
party are bound to perform to the country, and at the head of these duties, 
the destruction of the veto power contained in the Constitution stands 
prominently conspicuous. The following is the language which they have 
employed : 

" First. A reduction of the executive power, by a further limitation of the 
veto, so as to secure obedience to the public will, as that shall be eapressed by 
the immediate Bej^reseniatives of the people and the States, with no other 
control than that which is indispensable to avert hasty or unconstitutional 
legislation." 

Mark me, sir, the object is not to secure obedience to the public will as 
expressed by the people themselves, the source of all political power ; but as 
expounded by their Senators and Representatives in Congress. 

After enumerating other duties, they declare tliat " to the effectuation of 
these objects ought the exertions of the Whigs to be hereafter directed." And 
they make a direct appeal to the people by announcing that " those only should 
be chosen members of Congress who are willing cordially to co-operate in the 
accomplishment of them." Twenty thousand copies of this manifesto were 
ordered to be printed and circulated among the people of the United States. 

This appeal to the people, sir, was a vain one. Tlie avowal of their, princi- 
ples destroyed them. The people did not come to the rescue. Never was 
there a more disastrous defeat than theirs, at the last fall elections, so imme- 
diately after their triumphant victory. Thank Heaven ! the people have not 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 475 

thus far responded to tbis appeal, and I trust they may never consent to 
abohsh the veto power. Sir, the Democratic party, in regard to this power, 
in the lanjpaage of the doughty barons of England, centuries ago, are not will- 
ing that the charter of their liberties shall be changed. We shall hold on to 
this veto power as one of the most effectual safeguards of the Union, and one 
of the surest means of carrying into effect the will of the people. 

In my humble judgment, the wise statesman ought equally to avoid a fool- 
ish veneration for ancient institutions on the one hand, and a restless desire 
for change on the other. In this respect, the middle is the safer course. Too 
great a veneration for antiquity would have kept mankind in bondage ; and 
the plea of despots and tyrants, in every age, has been that the wisdom of 
past generations has established institutions which the people ought not to 
touch with a sacrilegious hand. Our ancestors were great innovators ; and 
had they not been so, the darkness and despotism which existed a thousand 
years ago would liave continued until the present moment. For my own part, 
I believe that the human race, from generation to generation, has in the main 
been advancing, and will continue to advance, in wisdom and knowledge ; 
and whenever experience shall demonstrate that a change, even in the Fed- 
eral Constitution, will promote the happiness and prosperity of the people, I 
shall not hesitate to vote in favor of such a change. Still, there are circum- 
stances which surround this instrument with peculiar sanctity. It was framed 
by as wise men and as pure patriots as the sun of heaven ever shone upon. 
We have every reason to believe that Providence smiled upon their labors, 
and predestined them to bless mankind. Immediately after the adoption of 
the Constitution, order arose out of confusion; and a settled Government, 
capable of performing all its duties to its constituents with energy and effect, 
succeeded to the chaos and disorder which had previously existed under the 
Articles of Confederation. For more than half a century, under this Consti- 
tution, we have enjoyed a greater degree of liberty and happiness than has 
ever fallen to the lot of any other nation on earth. Under such circumstances, 
the Senator from Kentucky, before he can rightfully demand our votes in 
favor of a radical change of this Constitution, in one of its fundamental articles, 
ought to make out a clear case. He ought not only to point out the evils 
which the country has suffered from the existence of the veto power, but 
ought to convince us they have been of such magnitude, that it is not better 
" to bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of." For my 
own part, I believe that the veto power is one of the strongest and stateliest 
columns of that fair temple which our ancestors have dedicated to liberty ; 
and tliat if you remove it from this time-honored edifice, you will essentially 
impair its strength and mar its beauty. Indeed there will then be great 
danger that in time it may tumble into ruins. 

Sir, in regard to this veto power, as it at present exists, the convention 
which framed the Constitution, although much divided on other subjects, were 
unanimous. It is true that in the earlier stages of their proceedings, it was 
considerably discussed, and presented in different aspects. Some members 



476 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

vrere in f\ivor of an absolute veto, and others were opposed to any veto, how- 
ever quahfied ; but they at length unanimously adopted the happy mean, and 
framed the article as it now stands in the Constitution. According to Mr. 
Madison's report of the debates and proceedings in the convention, we find 
that on Saturday the 21st July, 1787, "the tentli resolution giving the execu- 
tive a qualified veto, requiring two-thirds of each branch of the legislature to 
overrule it, was then agreed to nem. con." The convention continued in ses- 
sion for nearly two months after this decision ; but so far as I can discover, 
no member ever attempted to disturb this unanimous decision. 

A principle thus settled ought never to be rashly assailed under the ex- 
citement of disappointed feelings occasioned by the veto of two favorite meas- 
ures at the extra session, on which Senators had fixed their hearts. There 
ought to have been time for passion to cool and reason to resume her empire. 
I know very well that the Senator from Kentucky had announced his oppo- 
sition to the veto power so far back as June, 1840, in his Hanover speech ; 
but that speech may fairly be considered as a declaration of his own individual 
opinion on this subject. The great Whig party never adopted it as one of the 
cardinal articles of their faith, until, smarting under disappointment, they saw 
their two favorite measures of the extra session fall beneath this power. It 
was then, and not till then, that the resolution, in effect to abolish it, was 
adopted by them as a party, in their manifesto. The present amendment 
proposes to carry this resolution into execution. 

I should rather rely upon the judgment of the Senator from Kentucky on any 
other question, than in regard to the veto power. He has suffered so much 
from its exercise as to render it almost impossible that he can be an impartial 
judge. History will record the long and memorable struggle between hmiself 
and a distinguished ex-President, now in retirement. This was no common 
party strife. Their mighty war shook the whole Republic to its centre. The 
one swayed the majority in both Houses of Congress ; whilst the other was 
sustained by a majority of the people. Under the lead of the one, Congress 
passed bills to establish a Bank of the United States;— to commence a system 
of internal improvements ; — and to distribute the proceeds of the public lands 
among the several States; whilst the other, strong in his convictions of duty, 
and strong in his belief that the voice of the sovereign people would condemn 
these measures of their representatives, vetoed them every one. And what 
was the result ? Without, upon the present occasion, expressing an opinion 
on any one of these questions, was it not rendered manifest that the Presi- 
dent elected by the mass of the people, and directly responsible to them for 
his conduct, understood their will and their wishes better than the majority m 
the Senate and House of Representatives ? No wonder then that the Sena- 
tor from Kentucky should detest the veto power. It ought never to be torn 
from its foundation in the Constitution by the rash hands of a political party, 
impelled to the deed under the influence of defeated hopes and disappointed 
ambition. 

I trust now that I shall be able to prove that the Senator from Kentucky 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 477 

has entirely mistaken the character of the veto power ; that in its origin and 
nature it is peculiarly democratic ; that in the qualified form in which it exists 
in our Constitution, it is but a mere appeal by the President of the people's 
choice from the decision of Congress to the people themselves; and that 
whilst the exercise of this power has done much good, it never has been, and 
never can be, dangerous to the rights and liberties of the people. 

This is not " an arbitrary and monarchical power; " it is not "a monarch- 
ical prerogative," as it has been designated by the Senator. If it were, I 
should go with him, heart and hand, for its abolition. What is a monarchi- 
cal prerogative? It is a power vested in an emperor or king, neither elected 
by, nor responsible to, the people, to maintain and preserve the privileges of 
his throne. The veto power in the hands of such a sovereign has never been 
exerted, and never will be exerted, except to arrest the progress of popular 
Uberty, or what he may term popular encroachment. It is the character of 
the public agent on whom this power is conferred, and not the nature of the 
power itself, which stamps it either as democratic or arbitrary. In its origin 
Ave all know that it was purely democratic. It owes its existence to a revolt 
of the people of Rome against the tyrannical decrees of the Senate. They 
retired from the city to the Sacred Mount, and demanded the rights of free- 
men. They thus extorted from the aristocratic Senate a decree authorizing 
them annually to elect tribunes of the people. On these tribunes was con- 
ferred the power of annulling any decree of the Senate, by simply pronoun- 
cing the word ^' veto." This very power was the only one by means of 
which the Democracy of Rome exercised any control over the government of 
the republic. It was their only safeguard against the oppression and encroach- 
ments of the aristocracy. It is true that it did not enable the people, 
through their tribunes, to originate laws ; but it saved them from all laws 
of the Senate which encroached on their rights and liberties. 

Now, sir, let me ask the Senator from Kentucky, was this an arbitrary and 
monarchical power? No, sir; it was strictly democratic. And why? 
Because it was exercised by tribunes elected by the people, and responsible 
annually to the people ; and I shall now attempt to prove that the veto 
power, under our Constitution, is of a similar character. 

Who is the President of the United States, by whom this power is to be 
exercised? He is a citizen, elected by his fellow-citizens to the highest 
official trust in the country, and directly responsible to them for the manner 
in which he shall discharge his duties. From the manner in which he is 
elected, he more nearly represents a majority of the whole people of the 
United States than any other branch of the Government. Sir, one-fourth of 
the people may elect a decided majority of the Senate. Under the Constitu- 
tion, we are the representatives of sovereign States, and little Delaware has 
an equal voice in this body with the Empire State. How is it in regard to 
the House of Representatives? Without a resort to the gerrymandering 
process which of late years has become so common, it may often happen, 
from the arrangement of the Congressional districts, that a minority of the 



478 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

people of a State will elect a majority of representatives to Congress. Not 
so in regard to the President of the United States. From necessity, he must 
be elected by the mass of the people in the several States. He is the creature 
of the people — the mere breath of their nostrils — and on him, as the tribune 
of the people, have they conferred the veto power. 

Is there any serious danger that such a magistrate will ever abuse this 
power? What earthly inducement can he have to pursue such a course? In 
the first place, during his first term, he will necessarily feel anxious to obtain 
the stamp of public approbation on his conduct, by a re-election. For this 
reason, if no other existed, he will not array himself, by the exercise of the 
veto power, against a majority in both Houses of Congress, unless in extreme 
cases, where, from strong convictions of public duty, he may be willing to 
draw down upon himself their hostile influence. 

In the second place, the Constitution leaves him in a state of dependence 
on Congress. Without their support, no measure recommended by him can 
become a law, and no system of policy which he may have devised can be 
carried into execution. Deprived of their aid, he can do nothing. Upon 
their cordial co-operation the success and glory of his administration must, in 
a great degree, depend. Is it, then, at all probable that he would make war 
upon Congress, by refusing to sanction any one of their favorite measures, 
unless he felt deeply conscious that he was acting in obedience to the will of 
the people, and could appeal to them for support ? Nothing short of such a 
conviction, unless it be to preserve his oath inviolate to support the Constitu- 
tion, will ever induce him to exercise a power always odious in the eyes of 
the majority in Congress, against which it is exerted. 

But there is still another powerful influence which will prevent his abuse 
of the veto power. The man who has been elevated by his fellow-citizens to 
the highest office of trust and dignity which a great nation can bestow, must 
necessarily feel a strong desire to have his name recorded in untarnished 
characters on the page of his country's history, and to live after death in the 
hearts of his countrymen. This consideration would forbid the abuse of the 
veto power. What is posthumous fame in almost every instance? Is it not 
the voice of posterity re-echoing the opinion of the present generation ? And 
what body on the earth can give so powerful an impulse to public opinion, 
at least in this country, as the Congress of the United States? Under all 
these circumstances, we must admit that the opinion expressed by the Fed- 
eralist is sound, and that " it is evident that there would be greater danger of 
his not using his power when necessary, than of his using it too often or too 
much." Such must also have been Mr. Jefferson's opinion. When consulted 
by General Washington in April, 1792, as to the propriety of vetoing "the 
act for an apportionment of Representatives among the several States, accord- 
ing to the first enumeration," what was his first reason in favor of the exer- 
cise of this power upon that occasion ? " Viewing the bill," says he, " either 
as a violation of the Constitution, or as giving an inconvenient exposition to 
its words, is it a case wherein the President ought to interpose his negative?" 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 479 

"I think it is." " Tlie non user of his negative poiver begins already to excite 
a belief that no President ivill ever venture to itse it; and consequently , has 
begotten a desire to raise up barriers in the State legislatures against Congress 
ihroicing off the control of the Constitution." I shall not read the other rea- 
sons he has assigned, none of them being necessary for my present purpose. 
Perilous, indeed, I repeat, is the exercise of the veto power, and " no Presi- 
dent will ever venture to use it," unless from the strongest sense of duty, 
and the strongest conviction that it will receive the public approbation. 

But, after all, what is the nature of this cfualified veto under the Constitu- 
tion? It is, in fact, but an appeal taken by the President from the decision 
of Congress, in a particular case, to the tribunal of the sovereign people of 
the several States, who are equally the masters of both. If they decide against 
the President, their decision must finally prevail, by the admission of the 
Senator himself. The same President must either carry it into execution 
himself, or the next President whom they elect, will do so. The veto never 
can do more than postpone legislative action on the measure of which it is 
the subject, until the will of the people can be fairly expressed. This suspen- 
sion of action, if the people should not sustain the President, will not gener- 
ally continue longer than two years, and it cannot continue longer than four. 
If the people, at the next elections, should return a majority to Congress 
hostile to the veto, and the same measure should be passed a second time, he 
must indeed be a bold man, and intent upon his own destruction, who would, 
a second time, arrest it by his veto. After the popular A^oice has determined 
the question, the President would always submit, unless, by so doing, he 
clearly believed he would involve himself in the guilt of perjury, by violating 
his oath to support the Constitution. At the end of four years, however, in 
any and every event, the popular will must and would be obeyed by the 
election of another President. 

Sir, the Senator from Kentucky, in one of those beautiful passages which 
always abound in his speeches, has drawn a glowing picture of the isolated 
condition of kings, whose ears the voice of public opinion is never permitted 
to reach ; and he has compared their condition in this particular, with that of 
the President of the United States. Here too, he said, the Chief Magistrate 
occupied an isolated station, where the voice of his country and the cries of 
its distress could not reach his ear. But is there any justice in this compari- 
son ? Such a picture may be true to the life when drawn for an European 
monarch ; but it has no application whatever to a President of the United 
States. He, sir, is no more than the first citizen of this free Republic. No 
form is required in approaching his person, which can prevent the humblest 
of his fellow-citizens from communicating with him. In approaching him, a 
freeman of this land is not compelled to decorate himself in fantastic robes, or 
adopt any particular form of dress, such as the court etiquette of Europe 
requires. The President, intermingles freely with his fellow-citizens, and 
hears the opinions of all. The public press attacks him — political parties, in 
and out of Congress, assail him, and the thunders of the Senator's own 



480 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

denunciatory eloquence are reverberated from the Capitol, and reach the 
Wliite House before its incumbent can lay his head upon his pillow. His 
every act is subjected to the severest scrutiny, and he reads in the newspapers 
of the day the decrees of public opinion. Indeed, it is the privilege of every- 
body to assail him. To contend that such a Chief Magistrate is isolated from 
the people, is to base an argument upon mere fancy, and not upon facts. No, 
sir ; the President of the United States is more directly before the people, 
and more immediately responsible, than any other department of our Gov- 
ernment: and Avoe be to that President who shall ever affect to withdraw 
from the public eye, and seclude himself in the recesses of the Executive 
mansion ! 

The Senator has said, and with truth, that no veto of the President has 
ever been overruled, since the origin of the Government. Not one. Although 
he introduced this fact for another purpose than that which now induces me 
to advert to it, yet it is not the less true on that account. Is not this the 
strongest possible argument to prove that there never yet has been a veto, in 
violation of the public will ? 

[Here Mr. Clay observed that there had been repeated instances of majori- 
ties in Congress deciding against vetoes.] 

Mr. Buchanan resumed. I am now speaking of majorities, not of Con- 
gress, but of the people. I shall speak of majorities in Congress presently. 

Why, sir, has no veto been ever overruled ? Simply because the President 
has never exercised, and never will exercise, this perilous power on any 
important occasion, unless firmly convinced that he is right, and that he will 
be sustained by the people. Standing alone, with the whole responsibility of 
his high official duties pressing upon him, he will never brave the enormous 
power and influence of Congress, unless he feels a moral certainty that the 
people will come to the rescue. When he ventures to differ from Congress 
and appeal to the people, the chances are all against him. The members of 
the Senate and the House are numerous, and are scattered over the whole 
country, whilst the President is but an individual confined to the city of 
Washington. Their personal influence with their constituents is, and must 
be, great. In such a struggle, he must mainly rely upon the palpable justice 
of his cause. Under these circumstances,, does it not speak volumes in favor 
of the discretion with which the veto power has been exercised, that it has 
never once been overruled, in a single instance, since the origin of the Govern- 
ment, either by a majority of the people in the several States, or by the con- 
stitutional majority in Congress. 

It is truly astonishing how rarely this power has ever been exercised. 
During the period of more than half a century which has elapsed since the 
meeting of the first Congress under the Constitution, about six thousand 
legislative acts have been passed. How many of these, sir, do you suppose 
have been disapproved by the President ? Twenty, sir ; twenty is the whole 
number. I speak from a list now in my hand prepared by one of the clerks 
of the Senate. And this number embraces not merely those bills which have 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 481 

been actually vetoed ; but all such as were retained by him under the Consti- 
tution, in consequence of having been presented at so late a period of the 
session that he could not prepare his objections previous to the adjournment. 
Twenty is the sum total of all I 

Let us analyze these vetoes (for I shall call them all by that name) for a 
few moments. Of the twenty, eight were on bills of small comparative 
importance, and excited no pubhc attention. Congress at once yielded to the 
President's objections, and in one remarkable instance, a veto of General 
Jackson was laid upon the table on the motion of the Senator from Kentucky 
himself. No attempt was even made to pass the bill in opposition to this veto, 
and no one Senator contested its propriety. Eleven of the twelve remaining 
vetoes upon this list, relate to only three subjects. These are, a Bank of the 
United States ; internal improvements in different forms ; and the distribution 
of the proceeds of the public lands among the several States. There have 
been four vetoes of a Bank of the United States ; one by Mr. Madison, one 
by General Jackson, and two by Mr. Tyler. There have been six vetoes on 
internal improvements, in different forms ; one by Mr. Madison, one by Mr. 
Monroe, and four by General Jackson. And General Jackson vetoed the bill 
to distribute the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the several 
States. These make the eleven. 

The remaining veto was by General Washington ; and it is remarkable 
that it should be the most questionable exercise of this power which has evsr 
occurred. I refer to his second and last veto, on the first of March, 1797, and 
but three days before he retired from office, on the " Act to alter and amend 
an act, entitled an act to ascertain and fix the military establishment of the 
United States." In this instance, there was a majority of nearly two-thirds in 
the House of Representatives, where it originated, in favor of passing the act, 
notwithstanding the objections of the Father of his Country. The vote was 
jBfty-five in the affirmative to thirty-six in the negative. This act provided for 
the reduction of the military establishment of the country ; and the day will 
probably never again arrive when any President will venture to veto an act 
reducing the standing army of the United States. 

Then in the range of time since the year 1789, there have been but twenty 
vetoes; and eleven of these related to only three subjects which have radically 
divided the two great political parties of the country. With the exception of 
twenty, all of the acts which have ever passed Congress, have been allowed to 
take their course without any executive interference. 

That this power has never been abused, is as clear as the light of the sun. 
I ask Senators, and I appeal to you, sir, whether the American people have 
not sanctioned every one of the vetoes on the three great subjects to which I 
have referred. Yes, sir, every one, not excepting those on the Fiscal Bank and 
Fiscal Corporation — the leading measures of the extra session. Notwithstand- 
ing the solemn denunciation against the President, made by the Whig party, 
and their appeal to the people, there has been no election held since that 
session in which the people have not declared, in a voice of thunder, their 
I.-31 



482 LIFE OF JAMES. BUCHANAN. 

approbation of the two vetoes of President Tyler. I shall not, upon the 
present occasion, discuss the question whether all or any of these vetoes were 
right or wrong. I merely state the incontrovertible fact that they have all 
been approved by the American people. 

The character of the bills vetoed shows conclusively the striking contrast 
between the veto power when entrusted to an elective and responsible chief 
magistrate, and when conferred upon a European sovereign as a royal preroga- 
tive. All the vetoes Avhich an American President has imposed on any 
important act of Congress, except the one by General Washington, to which I 
have alluded, have been so many instances of self-denial. Tiiese acts have all 
been returned, accompanied by messages remonstrating against the extension 
of executive power, which they proposed to grant. Exerting the influence 
which these acts proposed to confer upon him, the President might, indeed, 
have made long strides towards the attainment of monarchical power. Had a 
national bank been established under his control, uniting the moneyed with 
the political power of the country ; had a splendid system of internal improv- 
ments been adopted and placed under his direction, presenting prospects of 
pecuniary advantage to almost every individual throughout the land ; and in 
addition to all this, had the States become pensioners on the bounty of the 
Federal Government for the amount of the proceeds of the sales of the public 
lands, we might soon have witnessed a powerful consolidated Government, 
with a chief at its head, far different from the plain and unpretending Presi- 
dent recognized by the Constitution. The General Government might then 
have become everything, whilst the State governments would have sunk to 
nothing. Thanks to the vetoes of our Presidents, and not to Congress, that 
most of these evils have been averted. Had these acts been all approved by 
the President, it is my firm conviction that the Senator himself would as 
deeply have deplored the consequences as any other true patriot, and that he 
would forever have regretted his own agency in substantially changing the 
form of our Government. Had these bills become laws, the executive power 
would then have strode over all the other powers of the Constitution ; and 
then, indeed, the Senator might have justly compared the President of the 
United States with the monarchs of Europe. Our Presidents have had the 
self-denying firmness to render all these attempts abortive to bestow on them- 
selves extraordinary powers, and have been content to confine themselves to 
those powers conferred on them by the Constitution. They have protected 
the rights of the States and of the people from the unconstitutional means of 
influence which Congress had placed within their grasp. Such have been the 
consequences of the veto power in the hands of our elective chief magistrate. 

For what purposes has this power been exerted by European monarchs, 
with whom our President has been compared ? When exercised at all, it has 
always been for the purpose of maintaining the royal prerogative and arrest- 
ing the march of popular liberty. There have been but two instances of its 
exercise in England since the Eevolution of 1688. The first was in 1692, by 
William the Third, the rival of Louis the Fourteenth, and beyond quesiion the 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 483 

ablest man who has sat upon the throne of Great Britain for the last century 
and a half. He had the hardihood to veto the Earl of Shrewsbury's bill, 
which had passed both houses, hmiting the duration of Parliaments to three, 
instead of seven years, and requiring annual sessions to be held. He dreaded 
the influence which members of the House of Commons, responsible to their 
constituents at the end of each period of three years, might exert against his 
royal power and prerogatives ; and, therefore, held on by means of the veto 
to septennial Parliaments. And what did George the Third? In 1806 he 
vetoed the Catholic Emancipation bill, and thus continued to hold in political 
bondage millions of his fellow-men, because they insisted upon worshipping 
their God according to the dictates of tlieir own consciences. 

[Here Mr. Clay observed that this was a mistake, and expressed his 
belief that, upon the occasion alluded to, the matter had gone no further than 
the resignation of the Grenville administration.] 

Mr. Buchanan. I shall then read my authority. It is to be found in 
" Random Recollections of the House of Lords, by Mr. Grant," page 25. The 
author says: 

'• But if the king refuses his signature to it, [a bill] as George the Third did 
in the case of the Catholic Emancipation hill oj 1806, it necessarily falls to the 
ground. The way in Avhich the king intimates his determination not to give 
his assent to the measure, is not by a positive refusal in so many words ; he 
simply observes, in answer to the application made to him for that purpose, 
* Le roi s'avisera,' namely, ' The king will consider of it,' which is understood 
to be a final determination not to sanction the measure." 

But, sir, be this author correct or incorrect, as to the existence of a veto in 
1806, it is a matter of trifling importance in the present argument.* I admit 
that the exercise of the veto power has fallen into disuse in England since 
the revolution. And what are the reasons ? First, because its exercise by a 
hereditary sovereign to preserve unimpaired the prerogatives of the crown 
against the voice of the people, is always an odious exertion of the royal pre- 
rogative. It is far different from its exercise by an elective magistrate, acting 
in the character of a tribune of the people, to preserve their rights and 
liberties unimpaired. And secondly, because this veto power is no longer 
necessary to secure the prerogatives of the crown against the assaults of 
popular liberty. 

Two centuries ago, the people of England asserted their rights by the sword 
against their sovereign. They dethroned and beheaded him. Since that 

* Mr. Buchanan cannot discover, after careful examination, that any Catholic Emancipa- 
tion bill was vetoed by George the Third in 1800, according to the statement of Mr. Grant. 
That gentleman, most probably, intended to refer to the bUl for this purpose which was 
introduced by the Grenville ministry, in March, 1807, under the impression that they had 
obtained for it the approbation of His Majesty. Upon its second reading, notice was given 
of his displeasure. The ministry then agreed to drop the bill altogether ; but, notwithstand- 
ing this concession, they were changed, because they would not give a written pledge to the 
king, that they should propose no farther concessions to the Catholics thereafter. This was 
an exertion of the royal prerogative beyond the veto power. (Note by Mr. Buchanan.) 



484 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

time, the kings of England have changed their course. They have discov- 
ered from experience that it was much easier to govern Parhament by means 
of the patronage and money at the command of the crown, than openly to 
resist it by the veto power. This system has succeeded admirably. Influence 
has taken the place of prerogative ; and since the days of "Walpole, when the 
votes of members were purchased almost without disguise, corruption has 
nearly destroyed the independent action of Parliament It has now descended 
into the ranks of the people, and threatens destruction to the institutions of 
tliat country. In the recent contest for power between the "Whigs and the 
Tories, the bargain and sale of the votes of the electors Avas open and noto- 
rious. The bribery and corruption of both parties sought no disguise. In 
many places the price of a vote was fixed, like any other commodity in the 
market. These things have been proclaimed without contradiction on the 
floor of Parliament. The Tories had the most money to expend ; and the 
cause of dear bread, -with a starving population, prevailed over the modifica- 
tion or repeal of the corn laws. In a country so venal, it is easy for the 
crown, by a poUtic distribution of its honors, oflices and emoluments, and if 
these should all fail, by a direct application of money, to preserve its preroga- 
tives without the use of the veto power. 

Besides, the principal ministers of the crown are always members of the 
Ilouse of Lords or the House of Commons. It is they who originate the 
important laws; and they, and they alone, are responsible, because it is a 
maxim of the British government, that the king can do no wrong. If they 
cannot maintain a majority in Parliament by the use of the patronage and 
influence of the crown, they must yield their places to their successful rivals ; 
and the king, without the least hesitation, will receive as his confidential 
advisers to-morrow, the very men whose principles he had condemned but 
yesterday. Such is a king of England. lie can do no wrong. 

On one memorable occasion, when the ministers of the crown themselves 
— ^I refer to the coalition administration of Mr. Fox and Lord North — had 
passed their East India Bill through the House of Commons, it was defeated in 
the House of Lords by the direct personal influence of the sovereign. George 
the Third, it is known, would have vetoed that bill, had it passed the House 
of Lords ; and well he might. It was an attempt by his own ministei-s to 
obtain possession of the wealth and the power of India, and to use them for 
the purpose of controlling both the sovereign and the people of England. 
This was not the common case of a mere struggle between opposite parties 
as to which should administer the government, about which the sovereign 
of England might be perfectly indiflerent ; but it was an attempt to deprive 
the crown of its power and prerogatives. 

Under such circumstances, can the Senator seriously contend that, because 
the veto power has been disused by the kings of England, therefore, it 
ought to be taken from the President of the United States? The king is a 
hereditary sovereign — the President an elective magistrate. The king is not 
responsible to the people for the administration of the executive government 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 485 

— the President is alone respoiLsible. The king could feel no interest in using 
the veto power, except to maintain the prerogatives of the crown ; and it has 
been shown to be wholly unnecessary for this purpose; whilst the President 
has never exerted it on any important occasion, but in obedience to the pub- 
lic will, and then only for the purpose of preventing encroachment by Con- 
gress on the Constitution of the country, on the rights of the States, and on 
the liberties of the people. 

The Senator is mistaken in supposing that the veto power has never been 
exercised in France. It is true, I believe, that it has never been exerted by 
the government of Louis Philippe ; but his government is as yet nothing 
but a mere experiment. It has now existed less than twelve years, and 
during this short period there have been nineteen different cabinets. I saw a 
list of them a few days ago, in one of the public journals. To cite the exam- 
ple of such a government as authority here, is to prove that a Senator is 
hard run for arguments. The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth, used the sus- 
pensive veto power conferred upon him by the first French Constitution, 
upon more than one occasion ; but he used it not to enforce the will of the 
people as our Presidents have done, but against public opinion, which was at 
that time omnipotent in France. These vetoes proved but a feeble barrier 
against the tremendous torrent of the Revolution, which was at that time 
overwhelming all the corrupt and tyrannical institutions of the ancient mon- 
archy. 

The Senator has referred to the Declaration of Independence, to show that 
the exercise of this veto power by the king on the acts of the colonial legisla- 
ture was one of the causes of the Revolution. In that instrument he is 
charged with having " refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and 
necessary for the public good." In those days a douceur was presented, in 
Pennsylvania, to the proprietary governor, with every act of assembly in which 
the people felt a deep interest. I state this fact on the authority of Dr. 
Franklin. After the act was approved by the governor, it had then to be 
sent three thousand miles across the Atlantic for the approbation of a heredi- 
tary sovereign, in no manner responsible to the people of this country. It 
would have been strange, indeed, had not this power been abused under 
such circumstances. This was like the veto of Augustus after he had usurped 
the liberties of the Roman people, and made himself sole tribune — not like 
that of the tribunes annually elected by the Roman people. This was not the 
veto of James Madison, Andrew Jackson, or John Tyler — not the veto of a 
freeman, responsible to his fellow-freemen for the faithful and honest exercise 
of his important trust. This power is either democratic or arbitrary, as the 
authorit}' exercising it may be dependent on the people or independent of 
them. 

But, sir, this veto power, which I humbly apprehend to be useful in every 
State government, becomes absolutely necessary under the pecuhar and com- 
plex form of the Federal Government. To this point I desire especially to 
direct the attention of the Senate. The Federal Constitution was a work of 



486 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

mutual compromise and concession ; and the States which became parties to 
it, must take the evil with the good. A majority of the people within each 
of the several States have the inherent right to change, modify, and amend 
their Constitution at pleasure. Not so with respect to the Federal Constitu- 
tion, In regard to it, a majority of the people of the United States can 
exercise no such power. And why ? Simply because they have solemnly 
surrendered it, in consideration of obtaining by this surrender all the blessings 
and benefits of our glorious Union. It requires two-thirds of the representa- 
tives of the States in the Senate, and two-thirds of the representatives of the 
people in the House, even to propose an amendment to the Constitution ; 
and this must be ratified by three-fourths of the States before it can take 
effect. Even if twenty-five of the twenty-six States of which the Union is 
composed should determine to deprive " little Delaware " of her equal repre- 
sentation in the Senate, she could defy them all, whilst this Constitution shall 
endure. It declares that " no State, without its consent, shall be deprived 
of its equal suffrage in the Senate." 

As the Constitution could not have been adopted except by a majority of 
the people in every State of the Union, the members of the convention be- 
lieved that it would be reasonable and just to require that three-fourths of 
the States should concur in changing that which all had adopted, and to 
which all had become parties. To give it a binding force upon the con- 
science of every public functionary, each Senator and Representative, whether 
in Congress or the several State legislatures, and every executive and judicial 
oflScer, whether State or Federal, is bound solemnly to swear or aftirm that 
he will support the Constitution. 

Now, sir, it has been said, and said truly by the Senator, that the will of 
the majority ought to prevail. This is an axiom in the science of liberty, 
which nobody at the present day will dispute. Under the Federal Constitu- 
tion, this will must be declared in the manner which it has prescribed ; and 
sooner or later, the majority must and will be obeyed in the enactment of 
laws. But what is this majority to which we are all bound to yield ? Is it 
the majority of Senators and Representatives in Congress, or a majority of 
the people themselves ? The fallacy of the Senator's argument, from begin- 
ning to end, consists in the assumption that Congress, in every situation and 
under every circumstance, truly represents the deliberate will of the people. 
The framers of the Constitution believed it might be otherwise, and therefore 
they imposed the restriction of the quahfied veto of the President upon the 
legislative action of Congress. 

What is the most glorious and useful invention of modern times in the 
science of free government? Undoubtedly, written constitutions. For 
want of these, the ancient republics were scenes of turbulence, violence and 
disorder, and ended in self-destruction. And what are all our constitutions, 
but restraints imposed, not by arbitrary authority, but by the people upon 
themselves and their own representatives? Such throughout is the character 
of the Federal Constitution. And it is this Constitution thus restricted, which 



REPLY TO CLAY OX THE VETO POWER. 487 

has so long secured our liberty and prosperity, and has endeared itself to the 
heart of every good citizen. 

This system of self-imposed restraints is a necessary element of our social 
condition. Every wise and virtuous man adopts resolutions by which he 
regulates his conduct, for the purpose of counteracting the evil propensities ' 
of his nature, and preventing him from yielding under the impulses of sudden 
and strong temptation. Is such a man the less free — the less independent, 
because he chooses to submit to these self-imposed restraints ? In like man- 
ner, is the majority of the people less free and less independent, because it 
has chosen to impose constitutional restrictions upon itself and its repressnta- 
tives ? Is this any abridgment of popular liberty ? The true philosophy 
of republican government, as the history of the world has demonstrated, con- 
sists in the establishment of such counteracting powers, — powers always 
created by the people themselves, — as shall render it morally certain that no 
law can be passed by their servants which shall not be in accordance with 
their will, and calculated to promote their good. 

It is for this reason that a senate has been established in every State of 
the Union to control the House of Representatives : and I presume there is 
scarcely an individual in the country who is not convinced of its necessity. 
Fifty years ago, opinions were much divided upon this subject, and nothing 
but experience has settled the question. In France, the National Assembly, 
although they retained the king, rejected a senate as aristocratic, and our own 
Franklin was opposed to it. He thought that the popular branch was alone 
necessary to reflect the will of the people, and that a senate would be but a 
mere incumbrance. His influence prevailed in the convention which framed 
the first constitution for Pennsylvania, and we had no senate. The Doctor's 
argument against it was contained in one of his homely but striking illustra- 
tions. Why, said he, will you place a horse in front of a cart to draw it for- 
ward, and another behind to draw it back ? Experience, which is the Avisest 
teacher, has demonstrated the fallacy of this and all other similar arguments, 
and public opinion is now unanimous on the subject. Where is the man who 
does not now feel that the control of a senate is necessary to restrain and 
modify the action of the popular branch ? 

And how is our own Senate composed ? One-fourth of the people of this 
Union, through the agency of the State legislatures, can send a majority into 
this chamber. A bill may pass the House of Representatives by a unanimous 
vote, and yet be defeated here by a majority of Senators representing but 
one-fourth of the people of the United States. Why does not the Senator 
from Kentucky propose to abolish the Senate ? His argument Avould be much 
stronger against its existence than against that of the veto power in the hands 
of a Chief Magistrate, who, in this particular, is the true representative of the 
majority of the whole people. 

All the beauty, and harmony, and order of the universe arise from counter- 
acting influences. When its great Author, in the beginning, gave the planets 
their projective impulse, they would have rushed in a straight line through 



^gg LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the realms of boundless space, had he not restrained them within their pre- 
scribed orbits by the counteracting influence of gravitation. All the valuable 
inventions in mechanics consist in blending simple powers together so as to 
restrain and regulate the action of each other. Restraint — restraint — not that 
imposed by arbitrary and irresponsible power, but by the people themselves, 
in their own written constitutions, is the great law which has rendered Demo- 
cratic Representative Government so successful in these latter times. The 
best security which the people can have against abuses of trust by their public 
servants, is to ordain tliat it shall be the duty of one class of them to watch 
and restrain another. Sir, this Federal Government, in its legislative attri- 
butes, is nothing but a system of restraints from beginning to end. In order 
to enact any bill into a law, it must be passed by the representatives of the 
people in the House, and also by the representatives of the sovereign States 
in the Senate, where, as I have observed before, it may. be defeated by Sena- 
tors from States containing but one-fourth of the population of the country. 
After it has undergone these two ordeals, it must yet be subjected to that of 
the Executive, as the tribune of the whole people, for his approbation. If he 
should exercise his veto power, it cannot become a law unless it be passed by 
a majority of two-thirds of both Houses. These are the mutual restraints 
which the people have imposed on their public servants, to preserve their 
own rights and those of the States from rash, hasty, and impolitic legislation. 
No treaty Avitli a foreign power can be binding upon the people of this coun- 
try unless it shall receive the assent of the President and two-thirds of the 
Senate ; and this is the restraint which the people have imposed on the treaty- 
making power. 

All these restraints are peculiarly necessary to protect the rights and pre- 
serve the harmony of the different States which compose our Union. It now 
consists of twenty-six distinct and independent States, and this number may 
yet be considerably increased. Those States differ essentially from each other 
in their domestic institutions, in the character of their population, and even, 
to some extent, in their language. They embrace every variety of soil, 
climate, and productions. In an enlarged view, I believe their interests to be 
all identical; although, to the eye of local and sectional prejudice, they always 
appear to be conflicting. In such a condition, mutual jealousies must arise, 
which can only be repressed by that mutual forbearance which pervades the 
Constitution. To legislate wisely for such a people is a task of extreme deli- 
cacy, and requires much self-restraining prudence and caution. In this pomt 
of view, I firmly believe that the veto power is one of the best safeguards of 
the Union. By this power, the majority of the people in every State have 
decreed that the existing laws shall remain unchanged, unless not only a 
majority in each House of Congress, but the President also, shall sanction the 
change. By these wise and wholesome restrictions, they have secured them- 
selves, so far as human prudence can, against hasty, oppressive, and dangerous 
legislation. 

The rights of the weaker portions of the Union will find one of their great- 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 489 

est securities in the veto power. It would be easy to imagine interests of 
the deepest importance to particular sections which might be seriously en- 
dangered by its destruction. For example, not more than one-third of the 
States have any direct interest in the coasting trade. This trade is now secured 
to American vessels, not merely by a protective duty, but by an absolute pro- 
hibition of all foreign competition. Suppose the advocates of free trade run mad 
should excite the jealousy of the Senators and Representatives from the other 
two-thirds of the States against this comparatively local interest, and con- 
vince them tliat this trade ought to be thrown open to foreign navigation. 
By such a competition, they might contend that the price of freight would be 
reduced, and that the producers of cotton, wheat, and other articles ought not 
to be taxed in order to sustain such a monopoly in favor of their own ship 
building and navigating interest. Should Congress, influenced by these or 
any other consideration, ever pass an act to open this trade to the competi- 
tion of foreigners, there is no man fit to fill the executive chair who would 
not place his veto upon it, and thus refer the subject to the sober determina- 
tion of the American people. To deprive the navigating States of this privi- 
lege, would be to aim a deadly blow at the very existence of the Union. 

Let me suppose another case of a much more dangerous character. In the 
Southern States, which compose the weaker portion of the Union, a species 
of property exists which is now attracting the attention of the whole civilized 
world. These Stales never would have become parties to the Union, had 
not their rights in this property been secured by the Federal Constitution. 
Foreign and domestic fanatics — some from the belief that they are doing 
God's service, and others from a desire to divide and destroy this glorious 
Republic — have conspired to emancipate the Southern slaves. On this ques- 
tion, the people of the South, beyond the limits of their own States, stand 
alone and unsupported by any power on earth, except that of the Northern 
Democracy. These fanatical philanthropists are now conducting a crusade 
over the whole world, and are endeavoring to concentrate the public opinion 
of all mankind against this right of property. Suppose they should ever in- 
fluence a majority in both Houses of Congress to pass a law, not to abolish 
this property — for that Avould be too palpable a violation of the Constitution 
— but to render it of no value, under the letter, but against the spirit of some 
one of the powers granted ; will any lover of his country say that the Presi- 
dent ought not to possess the power of arresting such an act by his veto, until 
the solemn decision of the people should be known on this question, involving 
ihe life or death of the Union ? We, sir, of the non-slaveholding States, 
entered the Union upon the express condition that this property should be 
protected. Whatever may be our own private opinions in regard to slavery 
in the abstract, ought we to hazard all the blessings of our free institutions — 
our Union and our strength — in such a crusade against our brethren of the 
South? Ought we to jeopard every political right we hold dear, for the sake 
of enabling these fanatics to invade Southern rights, and render that fair por- 
tion of our common inheritance a scene of servile war, rapine, and murder ? 



490 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Shall we apply the torch to the magnificent temple of human liberty which 
our forefathers reared at the price of their blood and treasure, and permit all 
we hold dear to perish in the conflagration ? I trust not. 

It is possible that at some future day the majority in Congress may attempt, 
by indirect means, to emancipate the slaves of the South. There is no know- 
ino- through what channel the ever active spirit of fanaticism may seek to 
accomplish its object. The attempt may be made through the taxing power, 
or some other express power granted by the Constitution. God only knows 
how it may be made. It is hard to say what means fanaticism may not adopt 
to accomplish its purpose. Do we feel so secure, in this hour of peril from 
abroad and peril at home, as to be willing to prostrate any of the bariiers 
which the Constitution has reared against hasty and dangerous legislation ? 
No sir, never was the value of the veto power more manifest than at the 
present moment. For the weaker portion of the Union, whose constitutional 
rights are now assailed with such violence, to think of abandoning this safe- 
guard, would be almost suicidal. It is my solemn conviction, that there never 
was a wiser or more beautiful adaptation of theory to practice in any govern- 
ment than that which requires a majority of two-thirds in both Houses of Con- 
gress to pass an act returned by the President with his objections, under all 
the high responsibilities which he owes to his country. 

Sir, ours is a glorious Constitution. Let us venerate it— let us stand by it 
as the work of great and good men, unsurpassed in the history of any age or 
nation. Let us not assail it rashly Avith our invading hands, but honor it as 
the fountain of our prosperity and power. Let us protect it as the only sys- 
tem of government which could have rendered us what we are in half a cen- 
tury, and enabled us to take the front rank among the nations of the earth. 
In my opinion, it is the only form of government which can preserve the 
blessings of liberty and prosperity to the people, and at the same time secure 
the rights and sovereignty of the States. Sir, the great mass of the people 
are unwilling that it shall be changed. Although the Senator from Kentucky, 
to whom I cannot and do not attribute any but patriotic motives, has brought 
himself to believe that a change is necessary, especially in the veto power, I 
must differ from him entirely, convinced that his opinions on this subject are 
based upon fallacious theories of the nature of our institutions. This view of 
his opinions is strengthened by his declarations the other day as to the illimi- 
table rights of the majority in Congress. On that point he differs essentially 
from tl°eframers of the Constitution. They believed that the people of the 
different States had rights which might be violated by such a majority ; and 
the veto power was one of the modes Avhich they devised for preventing 
these rights from being invaded. 

The Senator, in support of his objections to the veto power, has used what 
he denominates a numerical argument, and asks, can it be supposed that any 
President will possess mere wisdom than nine Senators and forty Kepresenta- 
tives. (This is the number more than a bare majority of each body which 
would at present be required to pass a bill by a majority of two-thirds.) To 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 491 

this question, my answer is, no, it is not to be so supposed at all. All that 
we have to suppose is, what our ancestors, in their acknowledged wisdom, 
did suppose ; that Senators and Representatives are but mortal men, endowed 
with mortal passions and subject to mortal infirmities ; that they are suscepti- 
ble of selfish aud unwise impulses, and that they do not always and under all 
circumstances, truly reflect the will of their constituents. These founders 
of our Government, therefore, supposed the possibility that Congress might 
pass an act through the influence of unwise or improper motives; and that 
the best mode of saving the country from the evil effects of such legislation 
was to place a qualified veto in the hands of the people's own representative, 
the President of the United States, by means of which, unless two-thirds of 
each House of Congress should repass the bill, the question must be brought 
directly before the i^eople themselves. These wise men had made the Presi- 
dent so dependent on Congress that they knew he would never abuse this 
power, nor exert it unless from the highest and most solemn convictions of 
duty ; and experience has established their wisdom and foresight. 

As to the Senatoi-'s numerical argument, I might as well ask him, is it to 
be supposed that we are so superior in wisdom to the members of the House 
that the vote of one Senator ought to annul the votes of thirty-two Repre- 
sentatives? And yet the bill to repeal the bankrupt law has just been 
defeated in this body by a majority of one, although it had passed the House 
by a majority of thirty-two. The Senator's numerical argument, if it be good 
for anything at all, would be good for the abolition of the Senate as well as 
of the veto ; and would lead at once to the investment of all the powers of 
legislation in the popular branch alone. But experience has long exploded 
this theory throughout the world. The framers of the Constitution, in con- 
summate wisdom, thought proper to impose checks, and balances, and restric- 
tions on their Governmental agents; and woe betide us, if the day should 
ever arrive when they shall be removed. 

But I must admit that another of the Senator's arguments is perhaps not 
quite so easily refuted, though, I think, it is not very difficult to demonstrate 
its fallacy. It is undoubtedly his strongest position. He says that the ten- 
dency of the veto power is to draw after it all the powers of legislation ; and 
that Congress, in passing laws, will be compelled to consult, not the good of 
the country alone, but to ascertain, in the first instance, what the President 
will approve, and then regulate their conduct according to his predetermined 
will. 

This argument presupposes the existence of two facts, which must be 
established before it can have the least force. First, that the President would 
depart from his proper sphere, and attempt to influence the initiatory legisla- 
tion of Congress : and, second, that Congress would be so subservient as to 
originate and pass laws, not according to the dictates of their own judgment, 
but in obedience to his expressed wishes. Now, sir, does not the Senator per- 
ceive that his argument proves too much ? Would not the President have 
precisely the same influence over Congress, so far as his patronage extends, as 



492 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

if the veto had never existed at all ? He would then resemble the King of 
England, whose veto power has been almost abandoned for the last hundred 
and fifty years. If the President's power and patronage were coextensive 
with that of the king, he could exercise an influence over Congress similar to 
that which is now exerted over the British Parliament, and might control 
legislation in the same manner. 

Thus, sir, you perceive that to deprive the President of the veto power, 
would afford no remedy against executive influence in Congress, if the Presi- 
dent were disposed to exert it. Nay, more — it would encourage him to inter- 
fere secretly with our legislative functions, because, deprived of the veto 
power, his only resource would be to intrigue with members of Congress for 
the purpose of preventing the passage of measures which he might dis- 
approve. At present this power enables him to act openly and boldly, and to 
state his reasons to the country for refusing his assent to any act passed by 
Congress. 

Again : does not the Senator perceive that this argument is a direct attack 
upon the character of Congress ? Does he not feel that the whole weight of 
his argument in favor of abolishing the veto power, rests upon the wisdom, 
integrity, and independence of that body ? And yet we are told that in order 
to prevent the application of the veto, we shall become so subservient to the 
Executive, that in the passage of laws we will consult his wishes rather than 
our own independent judgment. The venality and baseness of Congress are 
the only foundations on 'which such an argument can rest; and yet it is 
the presumption of their integrity and wisdom on which the Senator relies 
for the purpose of proving that the veto power is wholly unnecessary, and 
ought to be abolished. 

In regard to this thing of executive influence over Congress, I have a few 
words to say. Sir, I have been an attentive observer of Congressional pro- 
ceedings for the last twenty years, and have watched its operations with an 
observing eye. I shall not pretend to say that it does not exist to some 
extent; but its power has been greatly overrated. It can never become 
dangerous to liberty, unless the patronage of the Government should be 
enormously increased by the passage of such unconstitutional and encroaching 
laws as have hitherto fallen under the blow of the veto power. 

The Executive, indeed, will always have personal friends, as well as ardent 
political supporters of his administration in Congress, who will strongly incline 
to view his measures with a favorable eye. He Avill also have, both in and 
out of Congress, expectants who look to him for a share of the patronage at 
his disposal. But, after all, to what does this amount ? 

Whilst the canvass is proceeding previous to his election, the expectations of 
candidates for office will array around him a host of ardent and active friends. 
But what is his condition after the election has passed, and the patronage 
has been distributed ? Let me appeal to the scene which we all witnessed in 
this city, at and after the inauguration of the late lamented President. It is 
almost impossible that one office seeker in fifty could have been gratified. 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 493 

What is the natural and necessary result of such numerous disappointments ? 
It is to irritate the feelings and sour the minds of the unsuccessful applicants. 
They make comparisons between themselves and those who have been suc- 
cessful, and self-love always exaggerates their own merits and depreciates 
those of their successful rivals, to such an extent, that they believe themselves 
to have been injured. The President thus often makes one inactive friend, 
because he feels himself secure in office, and twenty secret enemies awaiting 
tlie opportunity to give him a stab whenever a favorable occasion may offer. 
The Senator greatly overrates the power of executive influence either among 
the people or in Congress. By the time the offices have been all distributed, 
which is usually done between the inauguration and the first regular meeting 
of Congress thereafter, the President has but few boons to offer. 

Again : it is always an odious exercise of executive power to confer offices 
on members of Congress, unless under peculiar circumstances, where the 
office seeks the man rather than the man the office. In point of fact, but 
few members can receive appointments ; and those soliciting them are always 
detected by their conduct. They are immediately noted for their sub- 
serviency ; and from that moment, their influence with their fellow members 
is gone. 

By far the greatest influence which a President can acquire over Congress, 
is a reflected influence from the people upon their representatives. This is 
dependent upon the personal popularity of the President, and can never be 
powerful, unless, from the force of his character, and the value of his past 
services, he has inspired the people with an enthusiastic attachment. A 
remarkable example of this reflected influence was presented in the case of 
General Jackson ; and yet it is a high compliment to the independence, if not 
to the wisdom of Congress, that even he could rarely command a majority in 
both its branches. Still it is certain, notwithstanding, that he presented a most 
striking example of a powerful executive ; and this chiefly because he was 
deservedly strong in the aff'ections of the people. 

In the vicissitude of human events, we shall sometimes have Presidents 
who can, if they please, exercise too much, and those who possess too little, 
influence over Congress. If we witnessed the one extreme during General 
Jackson's administration, we now have the other before our eyes. For the 
sake of the contrast, and without the slightest disrespect towards the worthy 
and amiable individual who now occupies the Presidential chair, I would say 
that if General Jackson presented an example of the strength, the present 
President presents an equally striking example of the feebleness, of executive 
influence, I ask what has all the patronage of his high office done for him ? 
How many friends has it secured ? I most sincerely wish, for the good of the 
country, and for the success of his administration, that he had a much greater 
degree of influence in Congress than he possesses. It is for this reason that 
I was glad to observe, a few days ago, some symptoms of returning favor on 
this (tlie Whig) side of the house towards John Tyler. It is better, much 
better, even thus late, that they should come forward and extend to him a 



494 T-IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

helping hand, than, wishing to do so, still keep at a distance merely to preserve 
an appearance of consistency. I am sorry to see that from this mere affecta- 
tion they should appear so coy, and leave the country to suffer all the 
embarrassments which result from a weak administration. [Here several of 
the Whig Senators asked jocosely why the Democrats did not volunteer their 
services to strengthen the Government.] Oh ! said Mr. B., tve cannot do 
that. What is merely an apparent inconsistency in the Whigs, would be a real 
inconsistency in us. We cannot go for the Whig measures which were 
approved by President Tyler at the extra session. We cannot support the 
great Government Exchequer Bank of discount and exchange, with its three 
for one paper currency. I think, however, with all deference, that my Whig 
friends on this side of the House ought not to be squeamish on that subject. I 
think my friend from Georgia (Mr. Berrien) ought to go heart and hand for 
the Exchequer Bank. It is in substance his own scheme of a " Fiscal Cor- 
poration," transferred into the Treasury of the United States, and divested of 
private stockholders. Let me assure gentlemen that their character for con- 
sistency will not suffer by supporting this measure. 

And yet, with the example of this administration before their eyes, the 
Whigs dread executive influence so much that they wish to abolish the veto 
power, lest the President may be able to draw within its vortex all the 
legislative powers of Congress! What a world we live in! 

This authentic history is the best answer to another position of the Senator. 
Whilst he believes that there have been no encroachments of the General 
Government on the rights of the States, but on the contrary that it is fast 
sinking into the weakness and imbecility of the Confederation, he complains of 
the encroachments which he alleges to have been made by the President on 
the legitimate powers of Congress. I differ from him entirely in both these 
propositions, and am only sorry that the subject of the veto power is one so 
vast that time will not permit me to discuss them at present. This I shall, 
however, say, that the strong tendency of the Federal Government has, in 
my opinion, ever been to encroach upon the rights of the States and their 
people ; and I might appeal to its history to establish the position. Every 
violent struggle, threatening the existence of the Union, which has existed in 
this country from the beginning, has arisen from the exercise of constructive 
and doubtful powers, not by the President, but by Congress. But enough of 
this for the present. 

The Senator from Kentucky contends that, whether the executive be strong 
or weak. Congress must conform its action to his wishes, and if they cannot 
obtain what they desire, they must take what they can get. Such a princi- 
ple of action is always wrong in itself, and must always lead to the destruc- 
tion of the party which adopts it. This was the fatal error of the Senator 
and his friends at the extra session. He has informed us that neither " the 
Fiscal Bank" nor "the Fiscal Corporation" of that never to be forgotten 
session Avould have received twenty votes m either House, had the minds of 
members been left uninfluenced by the expected action of the Executive, 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 495 

This was the most severe censure which he could have passed on his party 
in Congress. It is now admitted that the Whig party earnestly advocated 
and adopted two most important measures, not because they approved them 
in the form in which they were presented, but for the sake of conciliating 
Mr. Tyler. Never was there a more striking example of retributive justice 
than the veto of both these measures. Whether it be the fiict, as the Senator 
alleges, that the Whigs in Congress took the Fiscal Corporation bill, letter for 
letter, as it came from the President to them, I shall not pretend to decide. 
It is not for me to compose such strifes. I leave this to their own file leaders. 
Without entering upon this question, I shall never fail, Avhen a fit opportunity 
offers, to express the gratitude which I feel, in common with the whole coun- 
try, to the President for having vetoed those bills, which it now appears 
never received the approbation of any person. It does astonish me, how- 
ever, that this proceeding between the President and his party in Congress 
should ever have been made an argument in favor of abolishing the veto power. 

This argument, if it prove anything at all, sets the seal of condemnation to 
the measures of the late extra session, and to the extra session itself. It is a 
demonstration of the hasty, inconsiderate, and immature legislation of that 
session. In the flush of party triumph, the Whigs rushed it, before passion 
had time to cool down into that calm deliberation, so essential to the wise 
and harmonious co-operation of the different branches of the Government. 
They took so little time to consult and to deliberate, to reconcile their con- 
flicting opinions and interests, and above all to ascertain and fix their real 
political principles which they had so sedulously concealed from the public 
eye throughout the contest, that none but those who were heated and excited 
beyond the bounds of reason ever anticipated any result but division, disaster, 
and defeat, from the extra session. The party first pursued a course which 
must have inevitably led to the defeat which they have experienced ; and 
would then revenge themselves for their own misdeeds by assailing the veto 
power. 

The lesson which we have received will teach Congress hereafter not to 
sacrifice its independence by consulting the executive will. Let them honestly 
and firmly pass such acts as they believe the public good requires. They will 
then have done their duty. Afterwards let the Executive exercise the same 
honesty and firmness in approving these acts. If he vetoes any one of them, 
he is responsible to the people, and there he ought to be left. 

Had this course been pursued at the extra session, Congress would have 
passed an act to establish an old-fashioned Bank of the United States, Avhich 
would have been vetoed by the President. A fair issue would thus have been 
made for the decision of their common constituents. There would then have 
been no necessity for my friends on this side of the house to submit to the 
humihation of justifying themselves before the people, on the principle that 
they were willing to accept something which they knew to be very bad, 
because they could not obtain that which they thought the public good 
demanded. 



496 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

This whole proceeding, sir, presents no argument against the veto power ; 
although it does present, in a striking hght, the subserviency of the Whig party 
in Congress to executive dictation. We may, indeed, if insensible to our own 
rio-hts and independence, give an undue influence to the veto power; but we 
shall never produce this effect if we confine ourselves to our own appropriate 
duties, and leave the Executive to perform his. This example will never, I 
think, be imitated by any party in the country, and we shall then never again 
be tempted to make war on the veto power. 

To show that this power ought to be abolished, the Senator has referred 
to intimations given on this floor, during the administration of General Jack- 
son, that such and such acts then pending would be vetoed, if passed. Such 
intimations may have been in bad taste; but what do they prove? The 
Senator does not and cannot say that they ever changed a single vote. In 
the instances to which he refers, they were the declaration of a fact which 
was known, or might have been known, to the whole world. A President 
can only be elected by a majority of the people of the several States. Through- 
out the canvass, his opinions and sentiments on every leading measure of 
public policy, are known and discussed. The last election was an exception 
to this rule ; but anotlier like it will never again occur in our day. If, under 
such circumstances, an act should pass Congress, notoriously in violation of 
some principle of vital importance, which was decided by the people at his 
election, the President would be faithless to the duty which he owed both to 
them and himself, if he did not disapprove the measure. Any person might 
then declare, in advance, that the President would veto such a bill. Let me 
imagine one or two cases which may readily occur. Is it not known from 
one end of the Union to the other, and even in every log cabin throughout its 
extent, that the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton] has an unconquerable 
antipathy to a paper currency, and an equally unconquerable predilection for 
hard money ? Now, if he should be a candidate for the Presidency,— and 
much more unlikely events have happened than that he should be a successful 
candidate— would not his election be conclusive evidence that the people were 
in favor of gold and silver, and against paper ? Under such circumstances, 
what else could Congress anticipate whilst concocting an old-fashioned Bank 
of the United States, but that he would instantly veto the bill on the day it 
was presented to him, without even taking time to sit down in his Presi- 
dential chair? (Great laughter, in which Mr. Benton and Mr. Clay both 
joined heartily.) Let me present a reverse case. Suppose the distinguished 
Senator from Kentucky should be elected President, would he hesitate, or, 
with his opinions, ought he to hesitate, a moment in vetoing an Independent 
Treasury bill, should Congress present him such a measure ? And if I, as a 
member of the Senate, were to assert, in the first case which I have supposed, 
whilst the bank bill was pending, that it would most certainly be vetoed, to 
what would this amount? Would it be an attempt to bring executive influ- 
ence to bear on Congress ? Certainly not. It would only be the mere asser- 
tion of a well known fact. Would it prove anything against the veto power ? 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 497 

Certainly not ; but directly the reverse. It would prove that it ought to be 
exercised — that the people had willed, by the Presidential election, that it 
should be exercised — and that it was one of the very cases which demanded 
its exercise. 

An anticipation of the exercise of the veto power, in cases which had 
already been decided by the people, ought to exercise a restraining influence 
over Congress. It should admonish them that they ought not to place them- 
selves in hostile array against the Executive, and thus embarrass the adminis- 
tration of the Government by the adoption of a measure which had been 
previously condemned by the people. If the measure be right in itself, the 
people will, at the subsequent elections, reverse their own decision, and then, 
and not till then, ought Congress to act. No, sir ; when we elect a Presi- 
dent, we do it in view of his future course of action, inferred from his known 
opinions ; and we calculate, with great accuracy, what he will and what he 
will not do. The people have never yet been deceived in relation to this 
matter, as has been abundantly shown by their approbation of every important 
veto since the origin of the Government. 

This veto power was conferred upon the President to arrest unconstitu- 
tional, improvident, and hasty legislation. Its intention (if I may use a word 
not much according to my taste) was purely conservative. To adopt the 
language of the Federalist, " it establishes a salutary check upon the legisla- 
tive body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, 
precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may 
happen to influence a majority of that body " (Congress). Throughout the 
whole book, whenever the occasion offers, a feeling of dread is expressed, lest 
the legislative power might transcend the limits prescribed to it by the Consti- 
tution, and ultimately absorb the other powers of the Government. From 
first to last, this fear is manifested. We ought never to forget that the repre- 
sentatives of the people are not the people themselves. The practical neglect 
of this distinction has often led to the overthrow of republican institutions. 
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; and the people should regard with a 
jealous eye, not only their Executive, but their legislative servants. The 
representative body, proceeding from the people, and clothed with their confi- 
dence, naturally lulls suspicion to sleep; and, when disposed to betray its 
trust, can execute its purpose almost before their constituents take the 
alarm. 

It must have been well founded apprehensions of such a result which 
induced Mirabeau to declare, that, without a veto power in the king, who 
was no more, under the first constitution of France, than the hereditary chief 
executive magistrate of a repubhc, he would rather live in Constantinople 
than in Paris. The catastrophe proved his wisdom ; but it also proved that 
the veto was no barrier against the encroachment of the Legislative Assem- 
bly ; nor would it have saved his own head from the block, had he not died 
at the most propitious moment for his fame. 

I might appeal to many passages in the history of the world to prove that 
I— 32 



498 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the natural tendency of legislative power has always been to increase itself; 
and the accuraulafion of this power has, in many instances, overthrown 
republican institutions. 

Our system of representative Democracy, Heaven's last and best political 
gift to man, when perverted from its destined purpose, has become the instru- 
ment of the most cruel tyranny which the world has ever witnessed. Thus 
it is that the best things, when perverted, become the worst. Witness the 
scenes of anarchy, confusion, and blood, from which humanity and reason 
equally revolt, which attended the French Revolution, during the period of the 
Legislative Assembly and National Convention. So dreadful were these 
scenes, all enacted in the name of the people, and by the people's own repre- 
sentatives, that they stand out in bold relief, from all the records of time, and 
are, by the universal consent of mankind, denominated " the reign of terror." 
Under the government of the Committee of Public Safety — a committee of 
the National Convention — more blood was shed and more atrocities com- 
mitted, than mankind had ever beheld within the same space of time. And 
yet all this was done in the name of liberty and equality. And what was 
the result ? All this only paved the way for the usurpation of Napoleon 
Bonaparte; and the people sought protection in the arms of despotism from 
the tyranny and corruption of their own representatives. This has ever been 
the course in which repubhcs have degenerated into military despotisms. Let 
these sacred truths be ever kept in mind : that sovereignty belongs to the 
people alone, and that all their servants should be watched with the eyes of 
sleepless jealousy. The Legislative Assembly and the National Convention 
of France had usurped all the powers of the government. They each, in 
their turn, constituted the sole representative body of the nation, and no wise 
checks and barriers were interposed to moderate and restrain their action. 
The example which they presented has convinced all mankind of the necessity 
of a senate in a republic ; and similar reasons ought to convince them of the 
necessity of such a qualified veto as exists under our Constitution. The 
people cannot interpose too many barriers against unwise and wicked legisla- 
tion, provided they do not thereby impair the necessary powers of the Gov- 
ernment. I know full well that such scenes as I have just described cannot 
occur in America ; but still we may learn lessons of wisdom from them to. 
guide our own conduct. 

Legislative bodies of any considerable number are more liable to sudden 
and violent excitements than individuals. This we have all often witnessed ; 
and it results from a well known principle of human nature. In the midst of 
such excitements, nothing is more natural than hasty, rash, and dangerous 
legislation. Individual responsibility is, also, diminished, in proportion to the 
increase of the number. Each person, constituting but a small fractional part 
of the whole mass, thinks he can escape responsibility in the midst of the 
crowd. The restraint of the popular will upon his conduct is thus greatly 
diminished, and as one of a number he is ready to perform acts which he 
would not attempt upon his own individual responsibihty. In order to check 



EEPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 499 

such excesses, the Federalist tells us that this veto power, or reference of the 
subject to the people, was granted. 

Again, sir, highly excited political parties may exist in legislative assemblies, 
so intent upon grasping or retaining power, that in the struggle they will 
forget the wishes and the interests of the people. I might cite several 
examples of this kind in the history of our own legislation ; but I merely 
refer to the odious and unconstitutional alien and sedition laws. Led on by 
ambitious and eloquent men who have become highly excited in the contest, 
the triumph of party may become paramount to the good of the country, and 
unconstitutional and dangerous laws may be the consequence. The veto 
power is necessary to arrest such encroachments on the rights of the States 
and of the people. 

But worst of all is the system of " log-rolling,''^ so prevalent in Congress 
and the State legislatures, which the authors of the Federahst do not seem to 
have foreseen. This is not a name, to be sure, for ears polite ; yet, though 
homely, it is so significant of the thing, that I shall be pardoned for its use. 
Now, sir, this very system of log-rolling in legislative bodies is that which has 
involved several of the States in debts for internal improvements, which I fear 
some of them may never be able to pay. In order to carry improvements 
which were useful and might have been productive, it was necessary to attach 
to them works of an opposite character. To obtain money to meet these 
extravagant expenditures, indulgence Avas granted to the banks at the expense 
of the people. Indeed, it has been a fruitful source of that whole system of 
ruinous and disastrous measures against which the Democracy have been 
warring for years. It has produced more distress in the country than can be 
repaired by industry and economy for many days to come. And yet how 
rarely has any Executive had the courage to apply the remedy which the veto 
power presents ? 

Let us, for a moment, examine the workings of this system. It is the more 
dangerous, because it presents itself to individual members under the garb of 
devotion to their constituents. One has a measure of mere local advantage to 
carry, which ought, if at all, to be accomplished by individual enterprise, and 
which could not pass if it stood alone. He finds that he cannot accomplish 
his object, if he relies only upon its merits. He finds that other members 
have other local objects at heart, none of which would receive the support of 
a majority if separately considered. These members, then, form a combination 
suflficiently powerful to carry the whole ; and thus twenty measures may be 
adopted, not one of which separately could have obtained a respectable vote. 
Thanks to the wisdom and energy of General Jackson, this system of local 
internal improvements which threatened to extend itself into every neighbor- 
hood of the nation, and overspread tlie land, was arrested by the veto power. 
Had not this been done, the General Government might, at the present day, 
have been in the same wretched condition with the most indebted States. 

But this system of " log-rolling " has not been confined to mere local 
affairs, as the history of the extra session will testify. It was then adopted in 



500 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

regard to important party objects, and was called the '-great system of 
measures of the Whig party." It was openly avowed that the majority must 
take the system in mass, although it is well known that several of the 
measures, had they stood alone, would have been rejected in detail. We are 
all perfectly aware that this was the vital principle of the extra session. By 
means of " log-rolling " the system was adopted. That the passage of the 
Distribution bill was the price paid for the Bankrupt bill, was openly avowed 
on this floor. By what mutual compensations the other measures were carried 
we are left to infer, and therefore I shall not hazard the expression of any 
opinion in this place on the subject. The ingredient, which one member could 
not swallow alone, went down easily as a component part of the healing dose. 
And what has been the consequence ? The extravagant appropriations and 
enormous expenses of the extra session have beggared the Treasury. 

It is to check this system, that the veto power can be most usefully and 
properly applied. The President of the United States stands "solitary and 
alone," in his responsibility to the people. In the exercise of this power, he is 
emphatically the representative of the whole people. He has the same feeling 
of responsibility towards the people at large, which actuates us towards our 
immediate constituents. To him the mass of the people must look as their 
especial agent ; and human ingenuity cannot devise a better mode of giving 
them the necessary control than by enabling him to appeal to themselves in 
such cases, by means of the veto power, for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether they will sanction the acts of their representatives. He can bring 
each of those measures distinctly before the people for their separate con- 
sideration, which may have been adopted by log-rolling as parts of a great 
system. 

The veto power has long been in existence in Pennsylvania, and has been 
often exercised, and yet, to my knowledge, it has never been exerted in any 
important case, except in obedience to the public will, or in promotion of the 
interests of the people. Simon Snyder, whose far-seeing sagacity detected 
the evils of our present banking system, whilst they were yet comparatively 
in embryo, has rendered himself immortal by his veto of the forty banks. 
The system, however, was only arrested, not destroyed, and we are now suf- 
fering the evils. The present governor has had the wisdom and courage 
repeatedly to exercise the veto power, and always, I believe, with public 
approbation. In a late signal instance, his veto was overruled, and the law 
passed by a majority of two-thirds in both Houses, although I am convinced 
that at least three-fourths of the people of the State are opposed to the 
measure. 

In the State of Pennsylvania, we regard the veto power with peculiar 
favor. In the convention of 1837, which was held for the purpose of propos- 
ing amendments to our Constitution, the identical proposition now made by 
the Senator from Kentucky was brought forward, and was repudiated by a 
vote of 103 to 14. This convention was composed of the ablest and most 
practical men in the State, and was almost divided between the two great 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER, 501 

rival parties of the country; and yet, in that body, but fourteen individuals 
could be found who were willing to change the Constitution in this particular. 

Whilst the framers of the Constitution thought, and thought wisely, that in 
order to give this power the practical effect they designed, it was necessary 
that any bill which was vetoed should be arrested, notwithstanding a majority 
of Congress might afterwards approve the measure ; on the other hand, they 
restrained the power, by conferring on two-thirds of each House the authority 
to enact the bill into a law, notwithstanding the veto of the President. Thus 
the existence, the exercise, and the restraint of the power are all harmoniously 
blended, and aflford a striking example of all the mutual checks and balances 
of the Constitution, so admirably adapted to preserve the rights of the States 
and of the people. 

The last reason to which I shall advert why the veto power was adopted, 
and ought to be preserved, I shall state in the language of the seventy-third 
number of the Federalist : 

" Tliis propensity (says the author) of the legislative department to intrude 
upon the rights, and to absorb the powers of the other departments, has been 
more than once suggested. The insufficiency of a mere parchment delinea- 
tion of the boundaries of each, has also been remarked upon, and the necessity 
of furnishing each with constitutional arms for its own defence, has been 
inferred and proved. From these clear and indubitable principles results the 
propriety of a negative, either absolute or qualified, in the Executive, upon 
the acts of the legislative branches." 

The Executive, which is the weaker branch, in the opinion of the Feder- 
alist, ought not be left at the mercy of Congress, " but ought to possess a 
constitutional and effectual power of self-defence." It ought to be able to 
resist encroachments on its constitutional rights. 

I admit that no necessity has ever existed to use the veto power for the 
protection of the Executive, unless it may possibly have been in a single in- 
stance; and in it there was evidently no intention to invade his rightful 
powers. I refer to the " Act to appoint a day for the annual meeting of Con- 
gress." This act had passed the Senate by a majority of 34 to 8 ; but when it 
was returned to this body by General Jackson with his objections, the majority 
was reversed, and the vote stood but 16 in favor to 23 against its passage. 

The knowledge of the existence of this veto power, as the framers of the 
Constitution foresaw, has doubtless exerted a restraining influence on Con- 
gress. That body have never attempted to invade any of the high Executive 
powers. Whilst such attempts have been made by them to violate the rights 
of the States and of the people, and have been vetoed, a sense of justice, as 
well as the silent restraining influence which proceeds from a knowledge that 
the President possesses the means of self-protection, has relieved him from 
the necessity of using the veto for this purpose. 

Mr, President, I did not think, at the time of its delivery, that the speech of 
the distinguished Senator from Kentucky was one of great power ; though 
we all know that nothing he can utter is devoid of eloquence and interest. I 



502 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

mean only to say that I did not then believe his speech was characterized by 
his usual ability ; and I was disposed to attribute this to the feeble state of his 
health and consequent want of his usual buoyancy of spirit. Since I have 
seen it in print, I have changed my opinion ; and for the first time in my life 
I have believed that a speech of his could appear better and more effective in 
the reading than in the delivery. I do not mean to insinuate that anything 
was added in the report of it; for I believe it contains all the arguments used 
by the Senator and no more ; but I was astonished to find, upon a careful ex- 
amination, that every possible argument had been urged which could be used 
in a cause so hopeless. This is my apology for having detained the Senate so 
long in attempting to answer it. 

[Mr. Clay observed that he never saw the speech, as written out by the 
reporter, till he read it in print the next morning ; and, although he found 
some errors and misconceptions, yet, on the whole, it was very correct, and, 
as well as he could recollect, contained all the arguments he did make use of, 
and no more.] 

Mr. Buchanan. I did not intend, as must have been evident to the Sena- 
tor, to produce the impression that anything had been added. My only pur- 
pose was to say that it was a better speech than I had supposed, and thus to 
apologize to the Senate for the time I had consumed in answering it. 

I shall briefly refer to two other arguments urged by the Senator, and shall 
then take my seat. Why, says he, should the President possess the veto 
power for his protection, whilst it is not accorded to the judiciary ? The 
answer is very easy. It is true that this power has not been granted to the 
judiciary in form ; but they possess it in fact to a much greater extent than 
the President. The Chief Justice of the United States and his associates, 
sitting in the gloomy chamber beneath, exercise the tremendous and irre- 
sponsible power of saying to all the departments of the Government, 
" hitherto shalt thou go, and no further." They exercise the prerogative of 
annulling laws passed by Congress, and approved by the President, whenever 
in their opinion, the legislative authority has transcended its constitutional 
limits. Is not this a self-protecting power, much more formidable than the 
veto of the President ? Two-thirds of Congress may overrule the Executive 
veto ; but the whole of Congress and the President united, cannot overrule 
the decisions of the Supreme Court. Theirs is a veto on the action of the 
whole Government. I do not say that this power, formidable as it may be, 
ought not to exist: on the contrary, I consider it to be one of the wise checks 
which the framers of the Constitution have provided against hasty and uncon- 
stitutional legislation, and is a part of the great system of mutual restraints 
which the people have imposed on their servants for their own protection. 
This, however, I will say, and that with the most sincere respect for the indi- 
vidual judges; tliat in my own opinion, the whole train of their decisions 
from the beginning favors the poAver of the General Government at the 
expense of State rights and State sovereignty. Where, I ask, is the case to 
be found upon their records, in which they have ever decided that any act of 



REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER. 503 

Congress, from the alien and sedition laws until the present day, was uncon- 
stitutional, provided it extended the powers of the Federal Government ? 
Truly they are abundantly able to protect their own rights and jurisdiction 
against either Congress or the Executive, or both united. 

Again : the Senator asks, why has not the veto been given to the Presi- 
dent on the acts of conventions held for the purpose of amending our Consti- 
tutions ? If it be necessary to restrain Congress, it is equally necessary, says 
he, to restrain conventions. The answer to this argument is equally easy. It 
would be absurd to grant an appeal, through the intervention of a veto, to the 
people themselves, against their own acts. They create conventions by virtue 
of their own undelegated and inahenable sovereignty; and when they speak, 
their servants, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, must be silent. 
Besides, when they proceed to exercise their sovereign power in changing 
the forms of their Government, they are peculiarly careful in the selection of 
their delegates — they watch over the proceedings with vigilant care, and the 
Constitution proposed, by such a convention, is never adopted until after it 
has been submitted to the vote of the people. It is a mere proposition to the 
people themselves, and leaves no room for the action of the veto power. 

[Here Mr. Clay observed, that Constitutions, thus formed, were not after- 
wards submitted to the people.] 

Mr. Buchanan. For many years past, I believe that this has always been 
done, as it always ought to be done, in the States : and the Federal Constitu- 
tion was not adopted until after it had been submitted to a convention of the 
people of every State in the Union. 

So much in regard to the States. The Senator's argument has no applica- 
tion whatever to the Federal Constitution, which has provided the mode of 
its own amendment. It requires two-thirds of both Houses, the very majority 
required to overrule a Presidential veto, even to propose any amendment; 
and before such an amendment can be adopted, it must be ratified by the 
legislatures, or by conventions, in three-fourths of the several States. To 
state this proposition, is to manifest the absurdity, nay, the impossibility of 
applying the veto power of the President to amendments, which have thus 
been previously ratified by such an overwhelming expression of the public 
will. This Constitution of ours, with all its checks and balances, is a wonder- 
ful invention of human wisdom. Founded upon the most just philosophical 
principles, and the deepest knowledge of the nature of man, it produces har- 
mony, happiness, and order, from elements which, to the superficial observer, 
might appear to be discordant. 

On the whole, I trust not only that this veto power may not be destroyed, 
but that the vote on the Senator's amendment may be of such a character as 
to settle the question, at least during the present generation. Sir, of all the 
executive powers, it is the one least to be dreaded. It cannot create; it can 
originate no measure; it can change no existing law; it can destroy no exist- 
ing institution. It is a mere power to arrest hasty and inconsiderate changes, 
until the voice of the people, who are alike the masters of Senators, Repre- 



504 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sentatives and President, shall be beard. When it speaks, we must all bow 
with deference to the decree. Public opinion is irresistible in this country. 
It will accomplish its purpose by the removal of Senators, Representatives, or 
President, who may stand in its way. The President might as well attempt 
to stay the tides of the ocean by erecting mounds of sand, as to think of con- 
trolling the will of the people by the veto power. The mounting waves of 
popular opinion would soon prostrate such a feeble barrier. The veto power 
is everything when sustained by pubUc opinion ; but nothing without it. 

What is this Constitution under which we live, and what are we ? Are 
we not the most prosperous, the most free, and amongst the most powerful 
nations on the face of the earth ? Have we not attained this pre-eminence, 
in a period brief beyond any example recorded in history, under the benign 
influence of this Constitution, and the laws which have been passed under its 
authority ? Why, then, should we, with rude hands, tear away one of the 
cords from this wisely balanced instrument, and thus incur the danger of im- 
pairing or destroying the harmony and vigorous action of the whole? The 
Senator from Kentucky has not, in my opinion, furnished us with any suffi- 
cient reasons. 

And after all, what harm can this veto power ever do ? It can never delay 
the passage of a great public measure, demanded by the people, more than 
two, or at the most, four years. Is it not better, then, to submit to this pos- 
sible inconvenience, (for it has never yet occurred,) than to destroy the power 
altogether? It is not probable that it ever will occur; because if the Presi- 
dent should disregard the will of the people on any important constitutional 
measure which they desired, he would sign his own political death warrant. 
No President will ever knowingly attempt to do it ; and his means of knowl- 
edge, from the ordeal through wliich he must have passed previous to his 
election, are superior to those of any other individual. He will never, unless 
in cases scarcely to be imagined, resist the pubHc will when fairly expressed. 
It is beyond the nature of things to believe otherwise. The veto power is 
tliat feature of our Constitution which is most conservative of the rights of 
the States and the rights of the people. May it be perpetual 1 

It was during the summer of 1842 that the treaty negotia- 
ted at Washington, between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton, 
settled various long standing and somewhat perilous controver- 
sies between the United States and England, for which Mr. 
Webster had remained in office under President Tyler. Mr. 
Buchanan was one of those who opposed the ratification of this 
treaty when it came before the Senate, in August, 1842. His 
speech in the secret session was very elaborate in its criticisms 
upon the whole negotiation, but it does not need to be repro- 
duced now. 



TREATY WITH ENGLAND. 505 

The debates on the treaty were not published until the fol- 
lowing session of Congress, which began in December, 1842. 
In February, 1843, Mr. Buchanan received the following letter 
from Mr. Jared Sparks, the distinguished historian : * 

[JARED SPARKS TO MR. EUCHANAN.] 

Cambridge, Feb. 11th, 1843. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I have received the copy of your speech, which you were so kind as to 
send me, and for which I beg you will accept my thanks. I have read it with 
much interest, for although I am, on the whole, a treaty man, yet there are 
two sides, and you have presented one of thera in a striking and forcible 
light. I am not well satisfied with the way in which the Caroline affair is 
allowed to subside. It was a gross outrage, in spite of all the soft words 
about it, and it demanded a round apology. I could wish also that there had 
been some express declaration of the sense of the Government against the 
pretended right of search. It is idle to dally on such a subject. There is no 
such right, there never was and there never ought to be ; and I should be glad 
to have the point settled, in regard to the United States, by a positive declar- 
ation, in a formal manner, that it can in no case be admitted. 

I observe that you deal out heavy blows upon my poor Paris map. I can 
assure you that it has not been by my knowledge or good will that it has 
fallen into the hands of the Senate. The information came accidentally into 
my possession, and, after much reflection, I thought it a duty to communicate 
it to the Department of State ; but I never anticipated for a moment that I 
was thus running the hazard of having my name bandied about in the Sen- 
ate ; nor did it occur to me that any public use could be made of it. I do 
not complain of the result, but I consider it unfortunate to me personally 
and I wish it could have been avoided. 

You have made a slight mistake in regard to the character of this map. 
You represent it as an old map, with old boundary lines marked upon it. 
This is not a true description. It is a map of "North America," with no 
boundary line marked upon it between Canada and the English colonies. 
The red mark is drawn by hand, — manuscript mark, — not following any 
engraved line. It is drawn with remarkable precision and distinctness, 
around the United States, even running out to sea and following the windings 
of the coast from the St. Mary's to the St. Croix. There are no other col- 
ored lines on the map. It carries with it the evidence of having been drawn 
with great care ; and from the head of the St. Croix to the mountains 
north of the sources of the Penobscot it winds along with an evident caution 

* The bistory of this treaty and of the controversy relating to the maps is given in the 
author's Life of Mr. Webster, vol. II, chap. 28. 



506 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

to separate the head waters of the streams which flow into the St. Jolm's 
from those which run to the south. I am here only stating facts, having no 
theory on the subject, nor, least of all, any desire to weaken our claim, which, 
till lately, has seemed to me unassailable. This map answers fully to that 
described in Franklin's letter ; and if he actually drew the line, it does seem 
to settle the question, for he could not be mistaken, at that time, as to the 
meaning of the commissioners. 

The copy of Mitchell's map, obtained from Baron Steuben's library, has a 
manuscript boundary line drawn in exact accordance with this supposed line 
of Franklin. But I do not see any allusion to this map in the debates. There 
is a tradition that it once belonged to Mr. Jay, but I believe no evidence of 
this fact has been. adduced. 

• But, after all, the thing which has weighed the most heavily on my mind 
as adverse to our claim, is the perfect silence of Mr. Jay and Mr. John 
Adams on the subject. Both these commissioners lived many years after the 
treaty of Ghent. Why should they not have declared, by some formal and 
public instrument, the facts of the case, and confirmed our claim, if they know 
it to be just ? Such a declaration would have been conclusive, even with an 
arbiter; and it would almost seem to have been a duty to their country to 
make it, of their own accord, when they saw such vast interests at stake. But 
no record of their opinion has ever been brought to light. 

Mr. "Woodbury has fallen into the same mistake as yourself, in regard to 
my unfortunate Paris map. Will you have the goodness to show him this 
letter ; and beUeve me, with sincere respect and regard. 

Your friend and most obedient servant, 

Jared Sparks. 

On the Tth of April, 1842, Mr. Buchanan addressed the Sen- 
ate in opposition to a measure advocated by the Whigs, which 
proposed to pledge and appropriate the proceeds of the public 
lands to the payment of the interest and principal of the public 
debt. It must be remembered that this speech was made under 
very peculiar circumstances, and. it is not necessary to repro- 
duce it. 

In the spring of the year 1844, it seemed that the old story 
of " bargain and corruption " in the election of John Quincy 
Adams in 1825 was about to be revived. General Jackson had 
again become excited on this subject by persons who wished at 
once to injure Mr. Clay and Mr. Buchanan. The following 
letter from Governor Letcher of Kentucky, an ardent admirer 
of Mr. Clay, informed Mr. Buchanan of what was impending : 



LETTER FROM GOVERNOR LETCHER. 507 

[governor LETCHER TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Frankfort, June 20, 1844. 

My Dear Sir: — 

Mr. Clay is very much provoked with General Jackson and other malicious 
persons for attempting to revive against him that old vile, miserable calumny 
of " bargain and sale." It is, I must confess, as you and I both know, a most 
villanous outrage, and well calculated to excite the ire of any man upon 
earth. I am not at all surprised that he should feel indignant upon the occa- 
sion. 

I am told he is resolved upon "carrying the war into Africa.'' Indeed I 
saw him for a few minutes shortly after he returned from Washington, when 
he alluded in some such terms to the subject. He was quite unwell at Mie 
time, and the conversation was very brief. It seems now (I was so informed 
an evening or two ago) he threatens to make a publication in vindication of 
his own character. What else he may do or say, I do not know. This much 
I learn, he will call upon me to give a statement of the conversation which 
took place between you and himself in my room in reference to the contest 
then pending between Adams and Jackson. 

I shall regret exceedingly if any such call is made upon me. Many years 
ago, as you remember, a similar call was made, and on my part refused. I 
do not at present perceive any good reason why I should change my opinion. 
The truth is, if my recollection serves me, after several interviews with you 
in regard to the matter, I told you explicitly I did not feel at liberty to give 
the conversation alluded to, and would not do so under any circumstances, 
without your express permission. Am I not right in my recollection? 

I do not think I shall or can be convinced that my decision as heretofore 
made is not perfectly correct. 

With great regard, 

R. P. Letcher. 

How Mr. Clay proposed " to cany the war into Africa," is 
to be explained by an occurrence which took place in January, 
1825, at the lodgings of Mr. Letcher in Washington, he being 
then a member of Congress from Kentucky. The persons pres- 
ent were Mr. Clay, Mr. Letcher, Mr. Buchanan, and Mr. Sloan 
of Ohio. The subject of the election of a President by the 
House of Representatives was talked of jocosely ; but in the 
course of the conversation Mr. Buchanan expressed his convic- 
tion that General Jackson would be chosen, adding, that " he 
would form the most splendid cabinet the country has ever 
had." Mr. Letcher asked : " How could he have one more 
distinguished than that of Mr. Jefferson, in which were both 



508 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Madison and Gallatin ? Where would he be able to find equally 
eminent men ? " Buchanan replied, looking at Mr. Clay, " I 
would not go out of this room for a Secretary of State." Clay 
playfully retorted that he " thought there was not timber there 
fit for a Cabinet office, unless it were Mr. Buchanan himself."* 
This familiar, private conversation, held in the unrestrained 
intercourse of a casual meeting, could have been of no use to 
Mr. Clay, even if divulged, in " carrying the war into Africa," 
unless he should treat it as an occm*rence having some connec- 
tion with the conversation between Mr. Buchanan and General 
Jackson, which is referred to in a previous chapter. The result 
would be that Mr. Buchanan would stand charged by Mr. Clay 
on the one hand, as an emissary of General Jackson to open a 
negotiation for Mr. Clay's vote in the House, as he had some 
years before been charged with being an emissary of Mr. Clay 
to approach General Jackson with a proposal to sell his vote for 
the office of Secretary of State. The truth manifestly is, that 
Buchanan would have been very glad to have had Mr. CLay 
appointed Secretary of State under General Jackson, not only 
because he had great admiration for Mr. Clay's splendid abili- 
ties, but for public and patriotic reasons ; and there were no 
such strict party relations at that time as would have rendered 
a union between Jackson and Clay in any degree objectionable. 
But neither in tlie conversation between General Jackson and 
Mr. Buchanan, in December, lS2i, nor in the conversation 
between Mr. Clay and Mr. Buchanan, at the lodgings of Mr. 
Letcher, in January, 1825, could either Jackson on the one 
hand, or Clay on the other, have had the slightest reason for 
claiming that on the former occasion Buchanan was acting as an ■ 
agent of Clay, or that on the latter occasion he was acting as an 
agent of Jackson. In that scene of excitement, there were 
persons in "Washington who stood in much closer relations with 
Jackson than Buchanan did at that time, in whose efforts to 
secure the votes of difi'erent delegations there were conversa- 
tions w^hich, construed in one way, approached pretty nearly to 
a tender of office to Mr. Clay. But they were the unauthorized, 
irresponsible and voluntary expressions by partisans of what 

* This account of the convereation is taken from a memorandum in the handwriting of 
Mr. Sloan. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH GOVERNOR LETCHER. 509 

tliey believed might take place, in case Jackson should become 
President ; and if they were ever understood in aiiy other sense 
by those to whom they were addressed, it is apparent that 
they were misunderstood. 

Governor Letcher, as soon as he learned that Mr. Clay 
threatened to make use of tiie conversation at his lodgings, 
resolutely refused to be a party to the disclosure. Mr. 
Buchanan's answer to his letter of the 20th of June, and the 
further correspondence between them, are all that it is needful 
to add : 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO GOV. LETCHER.] 

(Private.) Lancaster, June 27, 1844. 

My Dear Sir : — 

I have this moment received your very kind letter, and hasten to give it 
an answer. I cannot perceive what good purpose it would subserve Mr. Clay 
to publish the private and unreserved conversation to which you refer. I was 
then his ardent friend and admirer ; and much of this ancient feeling still sur- 
vives, notwithstanding our political differences since. I did him ample justice, 
but no more than justice, both in my speech on Chilton's resolutions and in 
my letter in answer to General Jackson. 

I have not myself any very distinct recollection of what transpired in your 
room nearly twenty years ago, but doubtless I expressed a strong wish to 
himself, as I had done a hundred times to others, that he might vote for 
General Jackson, and if he desired, become his Secretary of State. Had he 
voted for the General, in case of his election I should most certainly have 
exercised any influence which I might have possessed to accompUsh this 
result; and this I should have done from the most disinterested, friendly and 
patriotic motives. This conversation of mine, whatever it may have been, can 
never be brought home to General Jackson. I never had but one conversa- 
tion with him on the subject of the then pending election, and that upon 
the street, and the whole of it, verbatim et literatim, when comparatively 
fresh upon my memory, was given to the public in my letter of August, 
1827. 

The publication then of this private conversation could serve no other 
purpose than to embarrass me, and bring me prominently into the pending 
contest, — which I desire to avoid. 

You are certainly correct in your recollection. You told me explicitly that 
you did not feel at liberty to give the conversation alluded to, and would not 
do so, under any circumstances, without my express permission. In this you 
acted, as you have ever done, like a man of honor and principle. 

With every sentiment of regard, I remain sincerely. 

Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



510 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[gov. LETCHER TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Frankfort, July 7, 1844, 

My Dear Sir : — 

I have received your answer to my letters. I am glad your recollection 
of what took place between us corresponds so exactly with mine. 

I will not in any event violate my promise^ and shall, indeed did^ say as 
much to my distinguished friend. My resolution upon this point is firm and 
decided ; and I do not think it can be changed. 

Polk I Great Grod, what a nomination ! I do really think the Demo- 
cratic Convention ought to be damned to all eternity for this villanous business. 
Has Polk any chance to carry Pennsylvania ? 

I write you very hastily to get my letter in to-day's mail. More hereafter. 

Your sincere friend, 

R. P. Letcher. 

[gov, LETCHER TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

(Private.) Frankfort, July 19th, 1844. 

My Dear Sir : — 

I have not seen Mr. Clay since I wrote you, nor have I heard a single 
word more about that threatened publication. I hope he has thought better 
of it. I told him when I did see him, not to expect from me any statement 
of what took place in my room between you and him, and that I had made 
up my mind upon that subject years ago, and did not now see any good 
reason for changing it. 

I hardly think he will make a publication without submitting it to me ; 
indeed, I believe he said so expressly. As I can perceive no earthly good 
growing out of such a movement, of course I shall continue to oppose it in 
every possible manner. He has a great many facts now in his possession, and 
some much stronger than I had supposed to exist, and, no doubt, could put 
forth a powerful document, but he shall not do it with my consent. 

I had a short chat with Colonel Benton a few days ago. If you remember, 
he was always a good friend of mine, and having the fullest confidence in my 
discretion, he talked very freely. It was " Multum in parvo" Hterally. Well, 
the truth is, your party, speaking classically, have come to a poor pass. 
Polk for your leader ! and then to think of such villanous intrigues to get him 
on the track, and such old warriors as Van Buren, Buchanan, both the very 
fellows who were so rascally cheated, being compelled to support the " cre- 
tur." Why, I had rather die. 

The fact is, both Benton and yourself are hunted down daily by your own 
dogs. No two men are more constantly the subjects of vituperation by your 
own party, and I would see them at the devil before I would act a part in 
such a miserable play as they are now getting up. Besides, you owe it to 
your own true principles, to your State, to your country, to your own char- 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 511 

acter, not to engage in the dirty job of trying to elect such an as Polls 

to the greatest office in the world. 

Our Whig candidate for Governor is a death slow nag, as they tell me ; still 
he is a very worthy gentleman, and, I presume, will be elected very easily, 
though he is twelve or fifteen thousand votes weaker than Clay. I go to no 
public gatherings, but shall soon be let loose, thank God. 

R. P. Letcher. 

[BUCHANAN TO LETCHER.] 

Lancaster, July 27th, 184:4. 
Mt Dear Sir: — 

I have received your kind favors of the 7th and 19th instant, and am 
rejoiced to learn that your distinguished friend has probably thought better of 
the publication. You have ever been a sagacious man, and doubtless think 
that James K. Polk is not quite as strong an antagonist as Andrew Jackson, 
and therefore that it would not be very wise to drop the former and make up 
an issue with the latter. If this had been done, it would not be difficult to 
predict the result, at least in Pennsylvania. 

The whole afi"air has worried me much from first to last ; and yet I have 
been as innocent as a sucking dove of any improper intention. First to have 
been called on by Jackson as his witness against Clay, and then to be vouched 
as Clay's witness against Jackson, when, before Heaven, I can say nothing 
against either, is a little too much to bear patiently. I have got myself into 
this scrape, from the desire which I often expressed and never concealed, that 
Jackson, first of all things, might be elected President by the House, and that 
Clay might next be his Secretary of State. 

It was a most unfortunate day for the country, Mr. Clay, and all of us, when 
he accepted the office of Secretary of State (under J. Q. Adams). To be sure, 
there was nothing criminal in il-, but it was worse, as Talleyrand would have 
said, it was a great blunder. Had it not been for this, he would, in all proba- 
bility, now have been in retirement, after having been President for eight years ; 
and friends like you and myself, who ought to have stood together through life, 
would not have been separated. But, as the hymn says, I trust " there's 
better days a coming." 

You ask: — Has Polk any chance to carry Pennsylvania? and I answer, I 
think he has, Pennsylvania is a Democratic State by a majority of at least 
20,000 ; and there is no population more steady on the face of the earth. 
Under all the excitement of 1840, and Mr. Van Buren's want of popularity, 
we were beaten but 343 ; and ever since we have carried our State elections 
by large majorities. Besides, Muhlenburg, our candidate for Governor, is a 
fast horse, and will certainly be elected ; and the Governor's election will 
exercise much influence on the Presidential. But your people, notwithstand- 
ing, are in high hopes ; and, after my mistake in 1840, I shall not prophesy 
positively. 

I was ignorant of the fact that any portion of the Democratic party were 



513 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

playing the part of Acteon's dogs towards me. I stood ia no man's way. 
After my withdrawal, I never thought of the Presidency, and the few 
scattering votes which I received at Baltimore were given to me against my 
express instructions, at least so far as the Pennsylvania delegation were con- 
cerned. The very last thing I desired was to be the candidate. If they 
desire to hunt me down for anything, it must be because I have refused to 
join in the hue and cry against Colonel Benton, who has been for many 
years the sword and shield of Democracy. Although I diiFered from him on 
the Texas question, I believe him to be a much better man than most of his 
assailants. I sincerely hope that they may not be able to defeat his re-elec- 
tion to the Senate. I have delayed the publication of my Texas speech to 
prevent its use against him in the approaching Missouri elections. 

It is neither according to my taste, nor sense of propriety as a Senator of 
the United States, to take the stump, and I have yet resisted all importunities 
for that purpose. Whether I shall be able to hold out to the end, I do not 
know. It is sincerely my desire, and I owe Muhlenburg much kindness, and 
if he should request it, I could not well refuse. Should I enter the lists, I 
shall never say, as I never have said, anything which could give the most fas- 
tidious friend of Mr. Clay just cause of offence. I shall go to the Bedford 
Springs on Monday, where I expect to remain for a fortnight. 

As I grow older, I look back with a mournful pleasure to the days of 
" auld lang syne.'' There was far more heart and soul and fun in our social 
intercourse than exists " in these degenerate days." But, perhaps, to think 
so is an evidence of approaching old age. Poor Governor Kent! I was 
forcibly reminded of him a few days ago, when, at the funeral of a friend, I 
examined his son's gravestone, who was a student of mine. To keep it in 
repair has been for me a matter of pious duty. I loved his father to the last. 



I wish I could have you with me for a few days. I have better wine than 
any man between this and Frankfort, and no man in the world would hail 
you with a heartier welcome. When shall we meet again ? 

Ever your sincere friend, 

James Buchakan. 

[lETCHER to BUCHANAN.] 

Frankfort, August 3d, 1844. 
My Dear Sir: — 

Tour very interesting favor of the 27th ultimo has reached me and I have 
just read it with a great deal of pleasure. 

I have not seen Mr. Clay since I wrote you, nor have I heard one single 
word further in regard to the threatened publication. When I saw him, as I 
believe I told you, he had the full benefit of my opinion upon the subject, 
expressed in terms by no means equivocal. 

You know my warm, and strong, and long attachment to the man. A 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 513 

better and a greater man, take him altogether, in my view, has never lived in 
any age or country. He is a little excitable, and under that state of feeling 
seems to raise the imperial colors, but it's mere manner, growing out of his 
peculiar organization. He is not a malice bearing man, and never was. He 
never disliked you in his life, though I think you had always perhaps an 
impression to the contrary. But with all my regard for the man personally, 
and unbounded confidence in his political worth, I cannot be prevailed upon 
to advise him to make a publication, however strongly his feelings may be 
interested in the matter, of the character of the one alluded to, nor am I at 
all wiUing to be referred to as a witness to anything that occurred under the 
sanctity of my hospitality. Unless my mind undergoes a most radical change, 
I never will consent. And although I flatter myself I am an exceedingly 
amiable man, yet I am as firm, and as decided, and as unyielding in matters 
of judgment as any man living. 

Our election comes ofi" Monday next. The Whig candidate for governor 
is not considered by any means a popular man. He will not carry the entire 
Whig vote, according to the estimate of the knowing ones, by 10,000 votes. 
On the other side they are running a very popular man, and a " war horse at 
that." The party hnes will be better drawn between the candidates for 
lieutenant-governor, as I am told. My position places it very much out of 
my power to see exactly the progress of the campaign. 

One word as to yourself. Were I in your place, I would not take the 
stump, mark that. " I know a thing or two," and if I know anything, it is 
judging accurately " men and things." My opinion upon this point is correct. 
Polk has no more chance to be elected than if he were now dead, and buried, 
and damned, as he will be in due time. The idea of his being a tariff man is 
very provoking. 

I would pay Muhlenberg at a more convenient season. He is at best, a 
tricky old fellow ; I know him " like a book." We shall probably meet during 
the next spring, if we live. I may possibly make a visit to Washington after 
Clay gets under way. As this is rather an interesting topic (and as you pay 
no postage), I will explain myself to you more fully. 

Mr. Clay's attachment to me, I have no doubt about. I am fully aware 
that he has the most entire confidence in my integrity and (to the full extent 
of my merits) every reasonable confidence in my judgment. When he 
comes into power, he will be surrounded by a set of flatterers, artful, design- 
ing, and cunning. Of course a man in that condition, will at once, or in due 
time, form a new set of feelings and a new set of friends. It is the true 
course of human nature, and all history proves it. He may offer me some- 
thin"- but that may not be at all agreeable to my feelings. On this subject I 
have never had the first word with him or anybody else, and I don't intend to 
have. My impression has been all along, he would take Crittenden into the 
cabinet, should he be inclined to take a place. Oh no, when my friends are 
in trouble, I am a first rate doctor, but when restored, I doubt whether there 
will be use for me. The impression prevails in this country, that I can get 

L— 33 



514 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

any place that I select. Not so. I tell you this confidentially, that in case 
we live, we may see how accurately we understand the business. But in fact 
there is no place I have set my heart upon in the shghtest degree, and I do 
assure you now that I am not expecting, and hope that I shall never apply for 
any directly or indirectly. Upon a moment's reflection I doubt whether I shall 
go East in the spring, lest it might be supposed I was seeking place. My 
time is almost out as governor, and how to dispose of myself, I confess I know 
not, but I would rather fly to a saltpetre cave, and work for a living, than to 
solicit office from friends to whom I have adhered for upwards of a quarter 
of a century. True, my services were rendered without the hopes of personal 
reward. They were given purely for what I deemed the good of the country. 
This is a strange world, I can tell you. I often hear of its being said, if 
Letcher was out of the way, Mr. Adams, Mr. Buchanan, and Mr. Clay could 
be provided for, but Letcher will have a controlling influence, etc., etc. What 
miserable stuff". The truth is I shall not try to have a controlling influence, 
and do not wish it, and will not have it if I could get it. But I could not 
have it if I wanted it. Now give me just as long a love-letter as this. 
Don't drink up all that good wine, but wait till I come. 

Ever yours, 

R. P. Letcher. 

The whole substance of \Yhat Mr. Clay meant about " carry- 
ing the war into Africa " was probably this : that the familiar 
conversation at Mr. Letcher's room in January, 1825, was as 
good evidence of Jackson's efibrt to corrupt him as the con- 
versation between Jackson and Buchanan in the previous 
December was, of a purpose on his (Clay's) pai-t, to induce 
Jackson to buy his vote in the House of Representatives by 
promising to make him (Clay) Secretary of State.* 

* Geueral Samuel Houston, an intimate friend of General Jackson, held conversations in 
the winter of 1824-5 with the members of the Ohio delegation, in which he took it upon him, 
in his efforts to persuade them to vote for Jackson, to say, that in the event of liis election, 
" your man " (Clay) " can have anything he pleases." All this, and a great deal more of the 
same kind, meant only an expectation and belief on the part of some of Jackson's friends, 
that a political union between him and Mr. Clay would be for the good of the country, and 
it was their earnest wish to see it take place. Some of the friends of Mr. Clay supposed that 
these were advances made to him with General Jackson's knowledge and consent, and that, 
as they were not met by Clay, the indifference with which they were treated caused General 
Jackson's subsequent charge of "bargain and corruption" between Mr. Clay and Mr. 
Adams. This and many similar mistakes were the natural fruits of the excitement wliich 
prevailed in Washington during the winter of 1824-5. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

1843— 1844. 

BUCHANAN ELECTED TO THE SENATE FOR A THIRD TEEM — EFFORTS OP 
HIS PENNSYLVANIA FRIENDS TO HAVE HIM NOMINATED FOR THE 
PRESIDENCY — MOTIVES OF HIS WITHDRAWAL FROM THE CANVASS — 
THE BALTIMORE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION OF 1844 NOMINATES MR. 
POLK — THE OLD STORY OF ''BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION" — PRIVATE 
CORRESPONDENCE. 

IT was a natural consequence of so much distinction in pub- 
lic life, not only that Mr. Buclianan should be a third time 
elected to the Senate, but that his political and personal friends 
in Pennsylvania should be anxious to have him made the Demo- 
cratic candidate for the Presidency by the next national con- 
vention of that party. In that organization there was no man 
whose party and public services and personal qualifications 
could give him greater claims than Buchanan's to the consider- 
ation of liis political associates. It does not appear to me, 
judging from his private correspondence at this period, which 
lies before me in great masses, and which I have carefully 
examined, that he was specially anxious at this period of his 
life to become President of the United States. His ambition, 
if it led him to aim at that position, was regulated by great 
prudence, and it is quite apparent that he was just and consid- 
erate towards others whose names were in men's mouths or 
thoughts as well as his own. There can be no doubt of the 
entire sincerity with which he addressed the following letter to 
the Democratic members of the legislature, who, in communi- 
cating to him his re-election to the Senate, also expressed their 
desire to present his name to the nominating convention of 
their party as the favorite candidate of Pennsylvania for the 
Presidency. 



516 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



[to B. CRISPEN, and H. B. WRIGHT, ESQIHRES, AND OTHER MEMBERS OF 
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA.] 

Washington, February 2d, 1843. 
Gentlemen : — 

Your letter of congratulation on my recent re-election to the Senate of 
the United States has inspired me with feelings of profound gratitude. To 
have been thrice elected to this eminent station by the Democratic senators 
and representatives of my native State is an honor which ought to satisfy the 
ambition of any man : and its value is greatly enhanced by your assurance 
that in selecting me for another term, you but acted in accordance with the 
united voice of the Democratic party of Pennsylvania. So highly do I prize 
their good opinion that I can declare with heart-felt sincerity I would not 
forfeit this for all the political honors which my country could bestow. Their 
unsolicited and continued support have conferred upon me whatever of 
distinction in pubHc life I may enjoy ; and if it were possible for me now to 
desert their principles, I should feel that I deserved a traitor's doom. Instead 
of being elated, I am humbled by the consciousness of how little I have ever 
done to merit all their unexampled kindness. 

Of all the political parties which have ever existed, the Democratic party 
are the most indulgent and confiding masters. All they demand of any pub- 
lic servant is honestly and faithfully to represent their principles in the station 
where they have placed him ; and this I feel proudly conscious that I have done 
in the Senate of the United States, according to my best ability. I can, there- 
fore, offer you no pledge for my future conduct except the guarantee of the 
past. 

You have been further pleased to say that as Pennsylvanians you desire to 
see me " elevated to the highest office in the gift of the people," and you 
tender me " to the Union as Pennsylvania's favorite candidate for the next 
Presidency." I can solemnly declare that I was wholly unprepared for such 
an enunciation from the Democratic members of the legislature, having 
never received the slightest intimation of their intention until after their letter 
had been actually signed. 

Both principle and a becoming sense of the merit of others have hitherto 
prevented me from taking anj', even the least part in promoting my own ele- 
vation to the Presidency. I have no ambitious longings to gratify, conscious 
as I am that I have already received more of the offices and honors of my 
country than I have ever deserved. If I know my own heart, I should most 
freely resign any pretensions which the partiality of friends has set up for me, 
if by this I could purchase harmony and unanimity in the selection of a 
Democratic candidate. Besides, however proper it may be that candidates 
for inferior offices should make personal efforts to secure success, I am deeply 
convinced that the highest office under heaven ought to be the voluntary gift 
of the only free people upon earth. It ought to be their own spontaneous 



BUCHANAN AGAIN ELECTED TO THE SENATE. 517 

gift to the most worthy; and this alone can render it the crowning glory of a 
well spent public life. This alone can prevent the danger to our institutions 
which must resujt from the violent struggles of personal and interested parti- 
sans. The principles of the man, whom the people may thus delight to honor, 
oucrlit to have borne the test of long and severe service, and ought to stand 
out in such bold relief before his country as to place all doubt in regard to 
them at defiance. In my opinion, the candidate who would either intrigue 
or personally electioneer for the Presidency raises a strong presumption that he 
is unworthy of it. Whether it be probable that a man resolved, under the 
blessing of Providence, to act upon these principles, will ever reach the Presi- 
dency,°you can judge better than myself. I ought however in justice to 
myself to observe, that whilst this is my fixed purpose, I do not feel the less 
grateful to those kind and partial friends who have deemed me worthy of the 
highest office, because I have never attempted to enhst them in my support. 

"with these views plainly presented before the Democracy of Pennsylvania, 
if they should resolve to offer my name to the National Convention as a can- 
didate for the Presidency with that degree of unanimity which can alone give 
moral force to their recommendation, I feel that I ought not to counteract 
their wishes. Should they determine differently, this will not be to me a cause 
of the slightest mortification. 

One remark I am impelled to make before closing this letter. The princi- 
ples and the success of the party so immeasurably transcend in importance the 
elevation of any individual that they ought not to be jeopardized in the slight- 
est degree by personal partiality for either of the candidates. Every candi- 
date who has been named, and hundreds of individuals whose names have 
never been mentioned, would ably and faithfully administer the Government 
according to these principles. No good Democrat, therefore, ought to suffer 
his feelings to become so enlisted in favor of any one candidate, that he could 
not yield°his cheerful and cordial support to any other who may be nominated 
by the National Convention. 

With sentiments of grateful regard, I remain yours sincerely, 

James Buchaman. 

It soon became apparent to Mr. Buchanan that if he per- 
mitted his Pennsylvania friends to make him a candidate for 
the nomination, he would encounter the pretensions of Mr. Yan 
Buren, of Colonel Benton, and of other prominent men m the 
party. By the species of management common on such occa- 
sions, many of the delegates to the national Democratic con- 
vention, which was to assemble at Baltimore, on the ^'Tth of 
May (1844), were instructed or pledged to support Mr. Yan 
Buren. Mr. Buchanan promptly withdrew his name from the 
canvass, in a public letter. His private feelings on the whole 



518 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

matter of this nomination were expressed freely in the following 
letter to one of his lady friends, who had just gone to Europe : 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO MRS. ROOSEVELT.*] 

Washington, May 13 th, 1844. 
My Dear Madam : — 

I shall make Colonel King the bearer of this despatch. He and Doctor 
Martin will be able to give you all the news from your native land. I fear 
that his appointment to the French mission may induce you to remain longer 
abroad than you would otherwise have done, or than your friends would wil- 
lingly tolerate. Whilst I was delighted to learn the attentions which you had 
received, and which you can everywhere attract, I was sorry to entertain the 
apprehension that your afifections might be alienated from your own countiy 
and fixed upon the aristocratic society of Europe. Do not suffer such a feel- 
ing to gain possession of your heart. It will banish content from your bosom 
and render you unhappy in the land where Providence has cast your lot. 

I can give you but little news of the gay world of Washington. I have 
been incessantly occupied during the session, and have gone very little into 
society. How changed for me the gay world has been since you left us ; and 
I might add that Mr. Ingersoll is nearly as great an admirer as myself. I have 
not seen your neighbor, the divine Julia, for many weeks, nor attended any 
of her soirees except one. With all her follies and foibles, she is a lady, and 
this implies much. When we meet she always talks about you, and no sub- 
ject could be more agreeable to me. 

As you doubtless receive all the gossip of this city from your lady corres- 
pondents, and as Colonel King and Doctor Martin will be able to supply any 
deficiencies, I shall communicate the political intelligence. 

The Whigs have held their national convention at Baltimore, and consider 
Mr. Clay as good as elected. They are high in hope and burning with enthu- 
siasm. Nevertheless, they may yet have cause to realize the truth of the 
saying in Scripture, " Let not him that putteth on his armor boast as he who 
taketh it off." It cannot be denied, however, that the Democratic party are 
at present in a sad condition. Our national convention will meet at Balti- 
more on this day two weeks, and a large majority of the delegates have been 
instructed or pledged to vote for Mr. Van Buren; whilst many and perhaps 
most of the delegates beUeve that if nominated he will be defeated. His 
letter against the immediate annexation of Texas to the Union has mainly 
produced this effect, though he was not popular before. Had he seized the 
occasion which was presented to him, and followed in the footsteps of his 
illustrious predecessor, by coming out boldly for Texas, he might, and most 
probably would, have been elected President; but his chances of ever again 
reaching this elevated station are now gone forever. I know you will not 
break your heart on that account, and, personally, I should not ; but, politi- 



* Wife of the Hon. James J. Roosevelt of New York. 



HIS WITHDRAWAL FROM THE CANVASS. 519 

cally, I prefer him to Mr. Clay, as much as I prefer political good to political 
evil, though I like the Kentuckian. 

If Mr. Van Buren should withdraw, and the Democratic party could unite 
on any man, (and I think they could) we might yet elect our candidate. I 
fear, however, that he will not pursue this course ; and should another be 
nominated in opposition to him, this will only make confusion worse con- 
founded, for such a nomination would involve the violation of instructions, — 
a doctrine always odious to the Democracy. It is true that the new question 
of Texas has arisen since the instructions were voted, and this would be the 
pretext or the apology for his abandonment ; but many would not consider 
this a sufficient cause. Colonel Benton, Mr. Wright, Mr. Allen, Mr. Tappan, 
Mr. Atherton, and probably Mr. Fairfield, agree with Mr. Van Buren on the 
Texas question. The remainder of the Democratic Senators will go with 
" Old Hickory " for immediate annexation. 

You regret my withdrawal, and to me it is a source of sincere pleasure to 
beheve that you feel an interest in my fate ; but I confess I am yet fully con- 
vinced that I pursued the wise and proper course. I withdrew because a 
large majority of the delegates had been instructed to support Mr. Van 
Buren, and I wished to banish discord and promote harmony in our ranks. 
Should he now withdraw, I might, with honor, resume my old position ; but, 
should he persist, if nominated, I should be defeated. A very strong party 
in the South would now favor my nomination, because the Texas question has 
absorbed the anti-tariff feeling there, and in all other respects I should be 
acceptable to that portion of the Union ; but, I confess that if I should ever 
run for the Presidency, I would like to have an open field and a fair start. 
Q'he battle has already been more than half fought between Clay and Van 
Buren ; and it would be difficult for any new man to recall the forces which 
have already gone over to the enemy. I thus manifest the unbounded confi- 
dence which I have in your discretion and friendship, by writing to you 
opinions which I have never mentioned freely in conversation to any other 
person. Should little Van be again nominated, be shall receive my active 
support. 

I envy Colonel King the pleasure of meeting you, and would give any- 
thing in reason to be of the party for a single week. I am now " solitary and 
alone," having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to 
several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that 
it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find 
myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide 
good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very 
ardent or romantic affection. 

Colonel King takes out with him Mrs. Ellis, his niece. I was acquainted 
with her some years ago, and liked her very much. I hope you will be of 
the same opinion. 

Please to remember me in the kindest terms to Mr. Roosevelt and to 
Jemmy, who will remember me as long as he shall remember hickory oil. 



520 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Believe me that wherever you roam my kindest regards vrill follow you, 
and no friend on earth will greet your arrival in your native land with more 
joy than myself. 

Ever your friend, most sincerely and respectfully, 

James Buchanan. 

On the eve of the assembling of the Baltimore Convention, 
Mr. Buchanan addressed the followino; letter to two of the 
Pennsylvania delegates : 



'& 



[to MESSRS. FOSTER AND BREWSTER.] 

Washington, May 25th, 18i4. 
Gentlemen : — 

I feel no hesitation in giving your questions a frank and explicit answer. 

And first. Against Mr. Van Buren, I cannot be a candidate before the 
National Convention. After a large majority of the delegates to that conven- 
tion had either been instructed or pledged to support him, I voluntarily with- 
drew my name as a candidate for the purpose of concentrating the strength, 
and thus Becuring the triumph of the part}'. In consequence of this act of 
mine, the delegates from my own State have been instructed to support him, 
and I am thus placed in such a position that I feel myself bound both in honor 
and principle not to become his competitor. 

Second. Should Mr. Van Buren, after a fair trial, either be withdrawn by 
his friends, or should they be satisfied that he cannot obtain the nomination, 
and the delegates from Pennsylvania be thus left at liberty to make a second 
choice, in that event I should feel myself restored to my original position, and 
they would then have my consent to present my name, if they thought proper, 
as a candidate to the convention. 

From your friend, very respectfully, 

James Buchanan. 

The Baltimore Convention nominated James K. Polk of 
Tennessee as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. 
The Whig candidate was Mr. Clay. At the election, which 
took place in the autumn of 1844, Mr. Polk received 170 elec- 
toral votes, while Mr. Clay obtained but 105. No one of the 
leading Democratic statesmen in the country was more con- 
spicuous, or exerted greater influence in bringing about this 
result, than Mr. Buchanan. 

The following selections from his private correspondence at 
this exciting period, before and during the election of Mr. Polk, 
are all that can find space in this chapter : 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS. 521 

[to the rev. EDWARD Y. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington, February 29, 1844. 
Dear Edward: — 

I have received your very acceptable letter, and rejoice to learn that you 
and the family have enjoyed uninterrupted health since we parted. I now 
begin to entertain strong hopes that Charlotte may outgrow her disease. 

This city is now covered with mourning. Ere this can reach you, you will 
doubtless have heard of the dreadful accident which occurred on board the 
Princeton yesterday. Among the killed was Governor Gilmer, the recently 
appointed Secretary of the Navy. He and I were bound together by strong 
ties of friendship. He was an able, honest, clear-headed, shrewd and patri- 
otic man, who, had he lived, would, at no distant day, have become still more 
distinguished. He accepted the ofSce in which he died from the purest and 
most disinterested motives, and the country has lost much by his death. His 
wife was on board the Princeton, and — how mysterious are the ways of 
Providence ! — urged her husband to have the fatal cannon fired once more. 
She is almost frantic. She is an excellent woman, and is now left with nine 
children, and in no afSuent circumstances. Colonel Benton was at the breech 
of the gun and looking along the barrel, so that he might observe the course 
of the shot when the explosion took place, and i-eceived no bodily injury, 
except from the concussion. 

I was not on board myself, and am disposed to consider it almost provi- 
dential. I received no invitation, although I have been on terms of intimate 
friendship with Capt. Stockton and all his family for more than a quarter of a 
century. If invited, the invitation never reached me : if not, it is perhaps 
still more remarkable. Had I been on board, the probability is I should have 
been with those who were around the gun at the time of the explosion. 

Although with a straitened income, yet you must be a happy man, if you 
sincerely believe the doctrines which you preach and honestly practise them : 
and I have no reason to doubt either. If the fleeting life of man be but a 
state of trial for another world, he surely acts most wisely Avho spends his 
time in securing the things which pertain to his everlasting peace. I am a 
believer; but not with that degree of firmness of faith calculated to exercise a 
controlling influence over my conduct. I ought constantly to pray " help 
thou my unbelief." I think often and I think seriously of my latter end ; but 
when I pray (and I have preserved, and with the blessing of God shall pre- 
serve, this good habit from my parents), I can rarely keep my mind from 
wandering. I trust that the Almighty Father, through the merits and atone- 
ment of his Son, will yet vouchsafe to me a clearer and stronger faith than I 
possess. In the mean time, I shall endeavor to do my duty in all the relations 
of life. This was to have been a week of great gayety here. There was to 
have been a party and ball at the President's on Friday evening, a grand dinner 
at Mr. Blair's on Saturday, a grand diplomatic dinner at the French minister's 
on Sunday, another at Mr. Upshur's on Tuesday, and a grand ball by Mr. 



522 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Wilkins on Thursday. I was invited to tliem all ; but promptly declined the 
invitation for Sunday, having too much regard for the Sabbath to partake of 
such a festivity on that day. Still I did not assign this as my reason, because 
my life would not justify me in taking such ground. God willing, I expect 
to visit Lancaster about the 1st of April, and pass a few days there. I then 
hope to enjoy the pleasure of seeing you all in good health. Give my love 
to Ann Eliza and the family ; and remember me kindly to Dr. Sample, Joel 
Leighton, W. Conyngham and Mr. Mussleman, and believe me ever to be your 
affectionate brother, 

James Buchanan. 

[from the HON. SILAS WRIGHT.] 

Canton, September 23, 1844. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I see you are in the field, and take it for granted that you can have 

no more peace nor rest until after your State election, if until after the Presi- 
dential election. You will have noticed that I have been forcibly taken from 
the stump for promotion. Never has any incident in the course of my public 
life been so much against my interests, and feelings, and judgment as this 
proposed change, but it is too late now to complain of it ; the people may 
release me from any other evil to result than a defeat at the election, which 
personally would cause the least apprehension or anxiety, but politically 
is most dreaded. I do not think, however, we shall be beaten in this 
State though I very confidently apprehend that success will most effectually 
beat me. 

It is not my purpose, however, to trouble you with my griefs, but to tell 
you that all the information I receive, and my correspondents are very numer- 
ous, induces the very confident belief that we shall give Polk and Dallas the 
thirty-six electoral votes of this State. Never have I witnessed an equal 
degree of enthusiasm among our Democracy, not even in the days of Gen- 
eral Jackson, nor have I, at any time, known greater harmony, activity or 
confidence. 

I rejoice to say that your State seems to be surrendered by the Whigs 
themselves, and to be considered perfectly safe by our friends in all quarters 
of the Union. 

Mrs. Wright joins me in kindest regards and bids me tell you she sincerely 
hopes the Whig governor of this State will be elected. 

In much haste, I am respectfully and truly yours, 

Silas Wright. 

[from the HON. JAMES K. POLK.] 

(Private.) Columbia, Tenn., August 3, 1844. 

My Dear Sir : — 

I thank you for the information which you give me in your esteemed favor 
of the 23d ultimo. The account which you give of the political prospect in 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 533 

Pennsylvania, accords with all the information which I have received from 
other sources. The great "Key Stone State" will, 1 have no doubt, continue 
to be, as she has ever been, Democratic to the core, I was glad to hear your 
opinion of the probable result in New York as well as in Pennsylvania, 
because I have great confidence in your sober judgment, and know the caution 
with which you would express an opinion. I received a letter from Governor 
Lumpkin, of Georgia, yesterday, giving me strong assurances that that State 
is safe. We may not carry a majority of the members of Congress at the 
election which takes place next week, because of the peculiar arrangements 
of the districts, which were laid off by a Whig legislature, but that we will 
have a decided majority of the popular vote he has no doubt. In this State 
our whole Democracy were never more confident of success. It is true we 
have a most exciting and violent contest, but I think there is no reason to 
doubt that the State will be Democratic in November. A few weeks, how- 
ever, will put an end to all speculation in the State, and in the Union. 

The State elections in Pennsylvania and New Jersey will be over before 
this letter can reach you. Will you do me the favor to give me your opinion 
whether the vote in these elections may be regarded as a fair and full test of 
the strength of parties in November ? 

Thanking you for your very acceptable letter, I am, very sincerely, 

Your friend, 

James K. Polk. 

[to the HON. JAMES K. POLK.] 

Lancaster, September 23, 1844. 
Mr Dear Sm: — 

I have delayed to write to you on purpose until I could express a decided 
opinion in regard to the vote of Pennsylvania. I was so much deceived in 
the result of our State election in 1840, that this has made me cautious. We 
have had much to contend against, especially the strong general feeling in 
favor of the tarifi" of 1842, but notwithstanding all, I am now firmly con- 
vinced that you will carry the Keystone by a fair majority. Your discreet 
and well advised letter to Mr. Kane on the subject of the tarifif has been used 
by us with great effect. 

There may, I fear, be some falling off in the city and county of Phila- 
delphia, both on account of the Native American feelings and for some other 
causes. We have been much at a loss for an able and influential Democratic 
paper there, devoted to the cause rather than to men. The Pennsylvania is 
owned by a clique of the exclusive friends and officeholders of Mr. Van 
Buren, most of whom are obnoxious to the mass of the Democrats. It now 
does pretty well ; but it harped too long on the two-thirds rule. 

I have had several times to assure influential individuals in that city, with- 
out pretensions, however, to know your sentiments, that as you were a 
new man yourself, and would be anxious to illustrate your administration by 



534 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

popular favor as well as sound principle, you would not select old party hacks 
for office, merely because they had already held office under Mr. Van Buren. 
By the by, this gentleman's conduct since your nomination deserves all com- 
mendation. 

In my late political tour through the northern counties of Pennsylvania, I 
met many New Yorkers at lowanda. Among the rest were some of the mem- 
bers of the late Syracuse convention. They assured me, that after canvassing 
the information brought by the delegates from all parts of the State, they had 
arrived at the confident conclusion it would vote for Polk and Dallas. I have 
this moment received a letter from the Hon. Mr. Hubbard of Bath, in that 
State, a member of the present Congress, which assures me that we shall 
carry it by a majority of from 15,000 to 20,000, and so mote it be I 

Please to remember me in the very kindest and most respectful terms to 
Mrs. Polk. Tell her that although I have nothing to ask from the President, 
I shall expect much from the President's lady. During her administration, 
I intend to make one more attempt to change my wretched condition, and 
should I fail under her auspices, I shall then surrender in despair. 

With sentiments of the highest regard, I remain your friend sincerely, 

James Buchanan. 

[to the HON, JNO. B. STERIGERE.] 

Lancaster, July 17, 1844. 
My Dear Sir: — 

It was both pleasant and refreshing to receive a letter under your well 
known hand. It is so long since I have enjoyed such a treat, that I consider 
it a " bonne bouche." I hope it may never again be such a rarity. 

Nearly half my time is now occupied in writing answers to mass, county, 
township and association meetings ; and many of them are not satisfied Avith 
a single answer. I scarcely know what to do. If I once begin, to which I 
am very reluctant, I must continue. A public man cannot make selections. 
Besides, I have not been well since the adjournment of Congress, and must go 
to Bedford or have a bilious fever. I have never been in the Northern coun- 
ties of the State ; and if I make a start at all, I shall visit there in 
September. Should I commence earlier, I Avould be broken down long 
before the election. I would thank you, therefore, not to have me invited to 
address your meeting. Indeed, it is very uncertain whether I can attend. 

When you and I served with Mr. Polk in Congress, neither of us probably 
supposed that he would ever be President. He has since greatly improved. 
The last time he was in Washington he dined and passed the afternoon with 
me ; and the change forcibly impressed itself on me. Under all the circum- 
stances, I believe no better selection could have been made. I think there is 
but little doubt that he will carry Pennsylvania and be elected, even without 
New York or Ohio, unless we have been greatly deceived by our Democratic 
friends in the strength of the Texas question in the South. The returns 
from Louisiana do not please me. 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 525 

I am much urged to attend the Nashville meeting on the 15th August ; but 
the thing is impossible. I fear that the " hot bloods " of the South may say 
or do something there to injure us in the North. They are becoming rabid 
a"ain on the subject of the tariff. I have written to Donelson this day, 
strongly urging caution and discretion in their proceedings. 

Please to remember me very kindly to my friend Slemmer, and believe me 

ever to be, sincerely and respectfully, 

Your friend, 

James BcrcnANAN. 

[to the nON. JAMES K. POLK.] 

Lancaster, November 4, 1844. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I think I may now congratulate both yourself and the country on your 
election to the highest and most responsible office in the world. After our 
glorious victory on Friday last, I can entertain no doubt of the final result. I 
feel confident that New York will follow in our footsteps, notwithstanding 
their majority may be greatly reduced, as ours has been, by an unholy union 
of the Native Americans with the Whigs. 

Never have there been such exertions made by any party in any State as 
the Whigs have made since our Governor's election to carry the Keystone. 
They have poured out their money like water; but our Democracy has stood 
firm everywhere, except the comparatively few who have been seduced on 
the tariff question, and those whom the Native American humbug has led 
away. Immediately after the first election, we requested our honest and 
excellent Governor elect to come East of the mountains and take the stump 
in your favor; and this was no sooner said than done. lie produced a 
powerful impression wherever he went. I attended two mass meetings with 
him, and he made speeches at several other places. In " Old Bucks," he gave 
it to them both in Dutch and English much to their satisfaction. 

Whoever has observed with a reflecting eye the progress of parties in this 
country, must have arrived at the conclusion that there is but one mode of 
reuniting and invigorating the Democratic party of the Union and securing its 
future triumph, and that is, whilst adhering strictly to the ancient landmarks 
of principle, to rely chiefly on the young and efficient Democrats who have 
fougl)t the present battle. These ought not to be forgotten in the distribution 
of offices. The old officeholders generally have had their day, and ought to 
be content. Had Mr. Van Buren been our candidate, worthy as he is, this 
feeling, which everywhere pervades the Democratic ranks, would have made 
his defeat as signal as it was in 1840. Clay would most certainly have carried 
this State against him by thousands ; and I firmly believe the result would 
have been similar, even in New York. The Native American party in Phila- 
delphia never could have become so strong had it not been for the impression 
which, to some extent, prevailed there, that your patronage would be dis- 
tributed in that city amongst those called the Old Hunkers by the Democratic 



526 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Yours is a grand mission ; and I most devoutly trust and believe that you 
will fulfil it with glory to yourself and permanent advantage to the country. 
Democrats have been dropping off from their party from year to year on 
questions not essentially of a party character. It will be your destiny to call 
home the wanderers and marshal them again under the ample folds of the 
Democratic flag. It is thus that the dangerous Whig party will be forever 
prostrated, and we shall commence a new career of glory, guided under the 
old banner of our principles. 

From the violence of the Southern papers and some of the Southern states- 
men, I apprehend that your chief difficulty will be on the question of the tariff. 
They seem to cling with great tenacity to the horizontal ad valorem duty of 
the compromise act, which would in practice prostrate the Democracy of the 
Middle and Northern States in a single year, because it would destroy all our 
mechanics who work up foreign materials. If the duty on cloth and ready- 
made clothing were both 20 per cent, ad valorem, we should soon have no 
use for tailors in our large towns and cities. So of shoemakers, hatters, etc. 
Foreigners would perform the mechanical labor. 

The tariff ought to have been permanently settled in 1842. That was the 
propitious moment. With much difficulty I have prevented myself from 
being instructed that I might be free to act according to my own discretion. 
I then proposed to our Southern friends to adopt the compromise act as it 
stood in 1839. The Treasury required fully that amount of duties; whilst 
such a measure would have saved their constituency. For some time I 
thought they would have gladly embraced this proposition which was pre- 
sented by Mr. Ingersoll in the House ; but at a great caucus of the party 
several of the ultras opposed the measure, and the consequence has been the 
extravagant tariff of 1842. Had my proposition been adopted the country 
would have been just as prosperous as it is at present, and this would have 
been attributed in the North to that measure, as it now is to the tariff of 
1842; you would then have received a majority of 25,000 in Pennsylvania. 

With sentiments of the highest respect, I remain 

Sincerely your friend, 

James Buchanak. 

[to governor snuNK.] 

Washington, December 18, 1844. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I do most heartily rejoice that those who communicated to me expressions 
used by our friend Magraw must have been mistaken in the inferences which 
they deduced from his language. He was much in the company of my deadly 

enemy ■ who is 's most unscrupulous tool, and of . 

That he did use some unguarded language is beyond a doubt; but all this 
shall be as if it never had been. I venerated his deceased father, and have 
always been so much attached to him, that it almost unmanned me, when 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 537 

I learned that he had spoken unkindly of myself. Please to say nothing to 
him of what my former letter contained. 

The income tax of England has never been resorted to except in cases of 
extreme necessity. That tax at present in existence imposes seven pence per 
pound upon the annual rent of land and houses, upon the income from titles, 
railways and canals, mines and iron-works ; also upon the income of tenants 
or renters of land, upon public lands and securities, dividends on bank stock, 
Indian stock, and foreign stock payable in England, upon the profits of trades 
and professions, upon the income of public officers, salaries, etc. All incomes 
under £150 sterling per annum are exempt from this tax. Under the British 
government, they have adopted the means necessary to secure a just return 
of all incomes ; under ours, this, in many cases, would prove almost impossi- 
ble, without resorting to an inquisition unknown to our form of government. 
Indeed, as far as I know, our present taxes on income are eluded to a most 
shameful extent. The income tax has always been odious in England; and it 
would prove to be so, if carried to anything Uke the same extent, in tliis coun- 
try. The more I reflect upon the subject the more I am convinced that your 
" inaugural " should not specifically recommend any new mode of taxation. I 
know that, in common with myself, you entertain a horror of repudiation, 
either express or implied, and this might be expressed in the strongest terms, 
together with a willingness on your part to concur with the legislature in 
adopting any measures necessary to prevent so disgraceful a catastrophe; 
leaving to your administration, after it shall get fairly under way, to adopt 
the necessary measures to redeem the faith of the State. 

In regard to your selection for secretary of state, I entertain the same 
opinion, more strongly now than ever, which I have held from the beginning. 
Your attorney-general ought to be a Muhlenberg man, and such an one as 
will be satisfactory to that branch of the party. After his appointment, I 
hope to hear no more of these distractions ; and I trust that then we shall 
all be united under the broad banner of Democracy in support of your admin- 
istration. 

I know John M. Read well ; and I also know, that he enjoyed and deserved 
the confidence of Mr. Muhlenberg and his friends in an eminent degree. 
After his death, Mr. Read's conduct towards you was worthy of all praise. 
There are few lawyers, if any, in Philadelphia, his superiors; and he is a man 
of such firmness, energy, and industry, that he will always be found an effi- 
cient supporter in the hour of need. He holds a ready and powerful political 
pen, and is a gentleman of the strictest honor and integrity. I know you 
would be safe with him. Of both Mr. Brewster and Mr. Barr, I also entertain 
a high opinion ; and I think the appointment of either would give satisfaction 
to the friends of Muhlenberg. I confess I do not Hke Mr. Kane's political 
associations ; but he is a gentleman and a man of honor. 

There is one subject to which I desire to direct your attention. I know, 
from various quarters, that Porter is making a desperate effijrt to be elected 
United States Senator. He calculates upon seducing a sufficient number of 



528 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Democrats from their allegiance to the party, which, when united with the 

Whigs, would constitute a majority. and have both been 

here, and, on several occasions, expressed their confident belief in his success. 
From the conversation of the Whigs here and elsewhere, I think they will be 
mistaken as to the votes of their members ; but tliis I know, that it is of the last 
importance to you to maintain the caucus system. Should it be broken down 
at the commencement of your administration, it is easy to predict the conse- 
quences which may follow. I would, therefore, most respectfully advise that 
you should be at Harrisburg at the commencement of the session, not to take 
any part in favor of any candidate for the Senate, but to express your opinion 
strongly and decidedly in favor of an adherence to caucus nominations. 

We have no authentic news here from President Polk ; all is as yet con- 
jecture. His path will be beset by many difficulties. The first which will 
present itself, is Mr. Calhoun. To remove him will give great oflfence to many 
of the Southern gentlemen, who were mainly influential in procuring the 
nomination of Mr. Polk; to retain him, will exasperate Colonel Benton and 
that wing of the party.* It is hoped that he may retire, or consent to accept 
the mission to England. Then there are the Texas and tariff questions, 
which it will be difficult to settle to the satisfaction of the party. Colonel 
Polk has a cool and discreet head himself, and he will be surrounded by cool 
and discreet friends. 

Philadelphia is now in a state of office-hunting excitement, never known 
before. The office-hunters have taken it into their heads that Mr. Dallas, be- 
cause he has been elected Vice President, can procure them all offices, and 
they are turning his head with their incense. / venture to predict that they 
will prove io be greatly mistaken. The moment they discover this, their plans 
will be directed to some other divinity. 

You ask my advice in regard to recommendations from you to President 
Polk. I think you ought to be cautious in giving them, if you desire that 
they shall produce the effect your recommendations well deserve. I hope, 

. , however, to meet you at the inauguration. 

1/ I have sat up until a late hour to write you this long letter. I receive at 

the rate of about thirty letters a day ; and between important private calls 
and public business, I have found time to answer very few of them. 

Please remember me most kindly and respectfully to Mrs. Shunk and the 
young ladies, and believe me to be sincerely and devotedly 

Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



Before the following letters were written, Mr. Polk's nomina- 
tion to the Presidency had occurred. 



Mr. Calhoun was Secretary of State under President Tyler. 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 529 

[from MRS. CATRON.*] 

Nashville, July 4, 1844, 
Dear Sir: — 

I have received your kind letter of the 23d of June, and I feel a just appre- 
ciation of the compliment, in being selected from the number of your many 
fair and accomplished friends, as the companion of your sohtude. I know 
" it is not good for man to be alone," and if you could but take time to 
remember the sage advice I have often given you to the contrary of such 
an unchristian and vain attempt, you would now be basking in the charms of 
some blooming widow, and not be driven to the humble necessity of seeking 
stray rays of comfort from the " old head on young shoulders " of other men's 
wives. As, however, you are brought to the sad predicament — and strange 
to say, I am but little better oflf during the court, — and as nothing I just now 
think of aifords me more pleasure than to add a crumb of support to your for- 
lorn condition by boarding with you next session of Congress, and as Mr. 
Catron is the most generous of husbands to risk such dangerous associations, 
he will write to Mr. Carroll to engage us a house. 

N. B. — The court and Congress now meet at the same time, and Polk 
runs for President only once — positively only once — and all anti-annexation 
men are dead and buried. So /think, and that you know is law to you, as in 
Miss Gardiner's case, of whose ambitious aspirations I don't believe one word. 
In conclusion, permit me to say that on this occasion I have availed myself 
of your once offered kindness of the liberty of speech. 

Most truly your friend, 

M. Catron. 

The Hon. James Buchanan. 

[to MRS. CATRON.] 

My Dear Madam: — 

I sincerely thank you for having taken compassion on my forlorn and 
destitute condition. I can assure you that I greatly prefer the stray rays of 
comfort from yourself to " basking in the charms of any blooming widow " 
in the land. I do not like everlasting sunshine, or too much of a good 
thing : — and as to widow?, " I'll none of them. Comparisons are odoriferous," 
as Dogberry says. 

Ere this you have learned that with all your shrewdness you were mis- 
taken. The President is the most lucky man that ever lived. Both a belle 
and a fortune to crown and to close his Presidential career.! 

I hope you will be able to give Polk Tennessee. All appearances indicate 
his signal triumph in the Keystone State. His tariff letter to Kane was a 

♦ Wife of Mr. Jnptice Catron of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
t President Tyler' .s marriage to Miss Gardiner is the event here alluded to. The letter is 
without date. 

I.— 34 



530 • l^IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

good thing for us. Under the circumstances, I do not think a better nomina- 
tion could have been made; and as I had the honor of being Mrs. Polk's 
candidate I feel myself bound both in gallantry and in gratitude to do my 
best for the election of her husband. 

When she becomes the lady of the White House, as I believe she will be, 
I shall both expect and desire to be a favorite. As to yourself you stand fair 
under all administrations. 

Kemember me most kindly to the judge, and believe me ever to be sin^ 
cerely and respectfully 

Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



CHAPTEK XYIII. 

1842— 1849. 

HAKRIET LANE. 

FROM all " tlie heady currents of a fight " of politics, from 
the toils of statesmanship and the objects of ambition, the 
reader can now turn to the sweet charities of domestic and social 
life ; for these, notwithstanding his bachelor state, were not 
wanting to the public man whose life is traced in these volumes. 
A biography of Mr. Buchanan would be exceedingly imperfect 
without mention of that member of his family who, for the last 
twenty-five years of his life, stood in a very intimate domestic 
relation with him. It is a delicate matter to write of a living 
lady ; but the name of Harriet Lane will recall to many read- 
ers one who occupied w^ith singular grace positions in her 
uncle's household that were almost public, and whose domestic 
connection with him formed a most important element in his 
private happiness. Mr. Buchanan discharged with great fidel- 
ity all his duties to the various members of his family who 
could be said to have any claims upon him. Of that family he 
was always regarded as the head ; and when, in consequence of 
the death of one of his sisters and her husband, the care of four 
orphans devolved upon him, the youngest was at such an age 
that he could form her as he wished, and his wish was guided 
by the nicest sense of what belongs to the highest female 
excellence. 

His sister, Mrs. Lane, wife of Elliott T. Lane, died at Mer- 
cersburg, in the year 1839. Her husband survived her for only 
two years. They left four children : James Buchanan, Elliott 
Eskridge, Mary Elizabeth Speer, and Harriet Rebecca.* They 

* Mary married George W. Baker, and died in San Francisco in 1855, while Mr. 
Buchanan was Minister to England. Eskridge died in 1857; James in 1862. Harriet 
dropped the name of Rebecca after she had grown up, and was always known as Miss Lane, 
or Miss Harriet Lane. 



533 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

each inherited from their parents a moderate property. After 
the death of her father, Harriet, the youngest of the fom- 
orphans, was brought to Lancaster, and resided in her uncle's 
house, when he was at home in that cit}^ During his absences 
in Washington, she occasionally lived with two ladies in Lan- 
caster, friends of her uncle, — the Misses Crawford. For a few 
years she attended a school in Lancaster, and also had private 
teachers. She and her sister Mary were then placed at a 
boarding-school in Charlestown, Virginia, in the neighborhood 
of some of their flither's relatives. Harriet's education was 
finished at the well-known Eonian Catholic convent at George- 
town, in the District of Columbia. The present superintendent 
of that institution was one of her school-mates. 

To direct the education of this young girl, to form her re- 
ligious and moral principles, to guard her against the tempta- 
tions that beset an impulsive temperament, and to develop her 
into the character of a true woman, became one of the chief 
objects of Mr. Buchanan's busy life. At first there was danger 
that the hoyden might become a "fast" and dashing young 
lady. There was an exuberance of animal spirits, the accom- 
paniment of a fine physical organization and a healthy youth. 
There was an abundance of the generous, frank and joyous 
qualities of the female heart, along w^ith its delicacy and pur- 
ity. Such a nature required much discipline and a careful 
training ; and it might, perhaps, be thought that an old-bach- 
elor uncle, absorbed in public life, w^as not exactly the person 
to undertake this duty ; that, after spoiling the child as a pet, 
he would leave her to take her chances as a woman. But Mr. 
Buchanan was a man in whom authority and afiection could 
be most happily blended. He knew just how to exercise the 
one and to bestow the other. He knew the girl whom he had 
to influence, and he had a perfectly true sense of what a woman 
and a lady should be. 

It is not my purpose, or according to my taste, to enlarge on 
my own estimate of the results which he produced. The methods 
by which they were attained will sufliciently exhibit themselves 
in what I am to give to the reader ; and what is widely known 
of the lady who is unavoidably the subject of these observa- 
tions, attests that a beautiful woman, whom flattery and adula- 



HARRIET LANE. 533 

tion could not injure, and who became alike an ornament to 
society and a model of the domestic virtues, was formed by one 
of the busiest statesmen of our time, without a mother's aid 
and a mother's love. There is rarely to be met, in any literature 
of real life with which I am acquainted, a more interesting and 
instructive picture of a wise man's care for a woman's education, 
manners, deportment, and inner character, than is to be traced 
in Mr. Buchanan's charming letters to his niece. They began 
when she was a school-girl, were continued when she became the 
companion of his age and tlie friend of his declining years ; and 
they did not cease when he gave her to the husband of her 
choice. They are so numerous that it is difficult to make the 
selections to which my space confines me. After Miss Lane 
had grown up, whenever she was absent from her uncle, he 
Avrote to her almost daily. But his affection for her was un- 
selfish. He never failed to let her know how welcome would 
be her return, but he never exacted from her an abridgment of 
her pleasures, unless it was for her good that they should be 
interrupted. He could guide lier, when she was away from him, 
by a dozen written words, just as infallibly as if she were under 
his eye and within the sound of his voice. One of her letters 
to him, which has come into my hands among the great mass 
of his papers, shall be given in its proper place, as an artless 
proof that he had his reward, and knew that he had it, I 
shall make many extracts from this correspondence, because 
nothing that has come within my reach can so well reveal a 
beautiful side of Mr. Buchanan's character, of which the world, 
as yet, knows very httle. One is reminded by these letters 
of many well-known instances of such a tender care for a 
young relative, evinced by a series of letters. Lord Eldon's 
letters to his grandson and heir will occur to the reader; 
but the chancellor was always a stiff and formal writer, 
although his letters to his young kinsman are admirably wise. 
Lord Chatham's letters to his son William afford delightful 
reading; but even in his expressions of affection, the "Great 
Commoner" could not be otherwise than stately, classical, and 
a little dramatic. Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, although 
written, like everything that came from his pen, with the utmost 
correctness of a marvellous grace, lack, of course, the religious 



534 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

and moral basis of all sound philosophy of life. Madame De 
Sevigne's lively letters to her adored daughter, Burke's to the 
son whom he strangely over-estimated, are among the treas- 
ures that the world would not willingly lose. But I should 
omit a very interesting part of my duty in this work, if I did 
not place before the reader as many of the letters of Presi- 
dent Buchanan to his niece as I can find room for ; and 
although they are not to be ranked in all respects side by 
side with the most renowned specimens of the class to which 
they belong, they seem to me to exhibit a happy union of the 
tenderest afiection, deep religious principle, sound inculcation, 
minute direction of conduct, playfulness, vivacity, and an 
abounding confidence in the person to whom they were written. 
They are unique also in this — that they were written to a female 
relative, whom Providence had cast upon the care of an unmar- 
ried uncle, intensely occupied with the pursuits and interests of 
a statesman. 

But by way of prefice to such of these letters as can be 
quoted, it will be well to inform the reader that until t"he year 
1848, Mr. Buchanan, when at home in Lancaster, resided in a 
bachelor establishment, at the head of which, as housekeeper, 
was a lady who was always called " Miss Hetty." I am 
indebted to his nephew, Mr. James Buchanan Henry, for the 
following description of their domestic circle : 

In consequence of the death, in 1840, of my surviving parent, the youngest 
sister of Mr. Buchanan, I became a member of his immediate family. He 
was executor of my mother's will, and by it he was appointed my guardian. 
I was then seven years old. Mr. Buchanan at that time lived in a spacious 
brick house in the quiet inland city of Lancaster, on the principal street, 
called East King Street. This ancient town — one of the oldest in Pennsyl- 
vania, still retained the loyal names of colonial times, its best streets being 
named King, Queen, Duke, Orange, etc. At that date, Mr. Buchanan was in 
the Senate, and of course much of his time was passed in Washington ; but 
during the recess of Congress he resided in Lancaster, where he was much 
honored and beloved by its citizens ; and this personal attachment continued 
in a marked degree until his death. At the time of which I speak, his family 
consisted of a housekeeper, Miss Parker, always called " Miss Hetty," myself 
and his servants. At a little later period, my cousin, Harriet Lane, after the 
death of her parents, also became a member of our uncle's household. This 
little family circle continued unbroken, excepting during the temporary absences 



HARRIET LANE. 535 

of my uncle in Washington, or on other public duty, or when my cousin and 
I were at boarding school or college, until ray marriage in 1860, and until my 
cousin's departure for her new home in Baltimore, after her marriage. No 
flither could have bestowed a more faithful and judicious care upon his own 
children, than this somewhat stern but devoted bachelor uncle of ours 
bestowed upon us. While I was at school, in the little Moravian town of 
Litiz near by, when I was eleven years old, he required me to write to him 
once every month with great exactitude, and to each boyish letter he would 
write a prompt reply, carefully but kindly criticizing every part of it ; and if I 
had been careless in either penmanship or spelling, he would give me sharp 
reproof, which, coming from the hero of my youthful worship, made an im- 
pression which I remember to this day. 

Miss Hetty Parker, now a venerable lady of seventy-eight, residing in 
Lancaster in a comfortable house provided for her by my uncle's will, belonged 
to a respectable and quite " well-to-do '' family in Philadelphia. She became 
his housekeeper, I think, in 1834, or soon after, and was, by him and all of us, 
treated as a valued member of the family, and as a friend. She was always 
present at the table, and dispensed the hospitalities of my uncle's house until 
my cousin had grown to Avomanhood, and assumed a part of such duties. 
" Miss Hetty " continued to be one of the family circle, and to perform her 
duties most acceptably to Mr. Buchanan through the remainder of his life. I 
do not hesitate to say that it was largely owing to her vigilant care of his 
interests, and her wise economy, that his moderate private fortune, mainly 
earned by him in the practice of the law, and before he entered pubUc life, 
not only proved sufficient for his wants, but slowly increased, amounting, at 
his death, to about $300,000.* Miss Hetty was for nearly forty years his 
faithful attendant in health and nurse in sickness; and he was so much 
attached to her, that I have often heard him say that nothing should ever part 
her from him while he lived. He would let her do what she pleased, and say 
to him what she pleased, and even scold him, without rebuke ; — a privilege I 
never knew him to accord to any one else. No biography of Mr. Buchanan 
would be complete that did not mention this humble, unselfish and most 
faithful companion, who was so well known to the frequenters of Wheatland, 
and to the whole circle of Mr. Buchanan's friends. 



Altliongli the dates of the following letters run somewhat 
beyond the period at which the last chapter terminated, they 
embrace the six years of Miss Lane's school-girl life and her 



* In these days of miUions, such a fortune, accumulated by a man who had been in 
public life for about forty years, seems moderate indeed. It will appear, as we draw near the 
end of Mr. Buchanan's life, that he did not enrich himself out of the public, and that such 
fortune as he did accumulate must have been, as Mr. Henry says, the slow Increase of means 
honorably acquired and carefully husbanded. Yet he was not a parsimonious, but, on the 
contrary, he was a generous man. 



536 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN, 

entrance into society, and I therefore do not separate them. 
The foot-notes explain the public positions held by Mr. 
Buchanan at the respective dates, and some of the allusions to 
persons. 

[letters to miss lane.] 

Washington, February 16th, 1843. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

Tour letter afforded me very great pleasure. There is no wish nearer my 
heart than that you should become an amiable and intelligent woman : and I 
am rejoiced to learn that you still continue at the head of your class. You 
can render yourself very dear to me by your conduct; and I anticipate with 
pleasure the mor:ths which, I trust in Heaven, we may pass together after 
the adjournment of Congress. I expect to be in Lancaster for a week or ten 
days about the 1st of April, when I hope to see you in good health, and 
receive the most favorable reports of your behavior. 

Buck Yates is now a midshipman in the navy.* He is now at Boston, on 
board of the John Adams, and will sail in a few days for the Brazilian station. 
He may probably be absent for two or three years. He is much pleased with 
his situation, and I trust that his conduct may do both himself and his friends 
honor. When he left Meadville they were all well, except your aunt Maria, 
who still complains of a cough. Elizabeth is better than she has been for years. 

I send you $ , the remains of poor Buck's money when he arrived 

here. It was of no use to him and would be of no use to me here. Please 
to hand it to your brother James, and tell him to place it to my credit for 
what it is worth. 

When you write to your sister Mary, give her my kindest and best love. 

Remember me affectionately to your brother James, Miss Hetty and the 
Miss Crawfords, and believe me to be ever your affectionate uncle. May 
Heaven bless you. 

James Buchanan. 

Lancaster, March 20, 1843. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

It affords me sincere pleasure to receive your letter. It is one of the first 
desires oi my heart that you should become an amiable and a good girl. 
Education and accomplishments are very important ; but they sink into 
insignificance when compared with the proper government of the heart and 
temper. How all your relatives and friends would love you, — how proud 
and happy I should be to acknowledge and cherish you as an object of deep 



* James Buchanan Yates, son of Mr. Buchanan's sister Maria, who mrrried Dr. Yates, a 
physician in Meadvilie, Pennsylvania. 



LETTERS TO HARRIET LANE. 537 

affection, could I say, she is kind in heart, amiable in temper, and behaves in 
sucli a manner as to secure the affection and esteem of all around her I I 
now cherish the hope that ere long this may be the case. Endeavor to realize 
this ardent hope. 

What a long list of studies you are engaged upon ! The number would be 
too great for any common intellect; but it would seem that you manage them 
all without difficulty. As mythology and history seem to be your favorites, 
I shall expect, when we meet, that you will have all the gods and heroes of 
Greece and Rome at your fingers' ends. At a dmner table at Washington, 
during the last session, a wager was made that no person at the table could 
name all the Muses ; and the wager was won. Had you been one of the 
company, the result would doubtless have been different. I presume that 
the Muses and Graces are great favorites with you. Attend diligently to 
your studies; but above all, govern your heart and your conduct. 

Your friends, the Miss Crawfords, are about to move to a much more 
comfortable house ; so that should you return to scliool in Lancaster, you may 
be better accommodated. I presume your partiality still continues for these 
good ladies ; but to be serious, you must acknowledge that you did not treat 
them as they deserve. 

Our recent news from poor Elizabeth is very discouraging. Dr. Yates, 
who has been to see her, considers her case hopeless. Poor thing I She 
seems destined to tread the path that so many of our family have already 
trodden. Her husband is kind, affectionate and attentive, and she is sur- 
rounded by every comfort. She is in fuU communion with the Episcopal 
church. 

I know of no news here which would interest you. Lancaster has been 
very dull; and is likely so to continue. Your music mistress. Miss Bryan, 
was married a few evenmgs since to a Mr. Sterrett of Pittsburg. Annie 
Reigart and Kate Reynolds will take their degrees in a fortnight, and enter 
the world as young ladies. Judge Hayes has removed into town. 

Miss Hetty says that both Mary and yourseff promised to write to her, 
but that neither of you has written. She desires me to give her love to you 
both. Your brother James is well. 

Had Mary written to me that you were a good girl, and had behaved 
yourself entirely well, I should have visited you during the Christmas holi- 
days. Tell her, I shall expect her to write soon ; and as I rely confidently 
that she will not deceive me, I shall most heartily rejoice should her account 
of you be favorable. In that event, God willing, I intend to pay you a visit. 

Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Kennedy, whom I remember with 
much of " auld lang sync ; " also to Miss Annie. 

Give my kindest love to Mary, and beUeve me to be yours. 

Most affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

P. S.— Your uncle Edward and the family are well except your aunt. 



538 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

She has been in delicate health all winter, but is now much better. Jessie 
Magaw is in Baltimore, but will return home to Meadville soon. Your letter 
is without date, and does not purport to come from any particular place. 

Lancaster, July 25th, 1843. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

I enclose you a letter which I have received from Buck Yates, as your 
name is honorably mentioned in it. I wrote to him that it Vas ungallaut for a 
young naval officer to inform a " lady faire " that he would answer her letters 
should she write, and that he should himself commence the correspondence. 

I intend to leave for Bedford Springs in a day or two, and it is my pur- 
pose to return by Charleston, after two or three weeks, and pass a day with 
Mary and yourself. Give my kindest love to Mary, and believe me to be 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

Washington, July 17th, 18-15.* 
My Dear Harriet: — 

Altliough I should most gladly have you with me, yet I can not ask you 
to come here in this excessive heat. I have never felt the heat so oppressive 
as it has been for some time past ; and I should fear you might become sick 
were you to visit Washington, Besides, you could not have any enjoyment. 
I entertain a hope that I may be able to visit Bedford about the first of 
August. In that event, I should be willing to take you along with me. But 
whether it will be in my power to leave this city is still uncertain. Please to 
write to me how you intend to spend your vacation, and where a letter 
would reach you. Should the heat moderate, I still hope to see you in 
Washington. 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

Washington, July 27th, 1815. 
Mr Dear Harriet: — 

I believe, although I am not yet quite certain, that I shall be able to leave 
here for the Bedford Springs on Thursday next. I shall be glad if you will 
accompany me. Unless you hear from me in the meantime, you may be at 
Harper's Ferry on Thursday, before the cars pass from Baltimore to Cumber- 
land. If I should not be able to go on that day, you may still he there. Mrs. 
PleasontoD,t Miss Pleasonton and Mrs. Bancroft will take charge of you to 
Bedford ; and there you will find Mr. and Mrs. Plitt, under whose care I will 
place you until I can reach the Springs myself Still, I hope to be able to go 

* Mr. Buchanan became Secretary of State under President Polk In March of this year, 
t Wife of the Hon. Stephen Pleasonton, for very many j-ears Fifth Auditor of the 
Treasury Department. He possessed the entire confidence of all administrations. 



LETTERS TO HARRIET LANE. 539 

on Thursday. Of course you will get some one of your friends to accompany 
you from Charleston to Harper's Ferry. Please to write to me immediately 
on the receipt of this. 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

Washington, July 6th, 1846. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

Your welcome letter has been received, and I rejoice to learn 

I trust you will soon be well enough I think of all places for 

you the nunnery at Georgetown would be the best. Your religious principles 
are doubtless so well settled that you will not become a nun. 

My labors are great; but they do not "xvay" me down, as you write the 
word. Now I would say " weigh; " but doctors may differ on this point. 

I hope Mary has recovered ere this from her bruises. Give my love to 
her, and tell her to have her saddle girthed tighter the next time she rides. 

It will be easy for you to find Dr. Jackson's remedy in any hay-field near 
Lancaster at this season. It would be quite romantic and interesting to wit- 
ness your exploits on such a theatre. 

Your friends, Mrs. Bancroft and the Pleasontons, often inquire for you 
with kindness. They have given you somewhat of a name here ; and Mrs. 
Polk and Miss Rucker, her niece, have several times urged me to permit you 
to come and pass some time with them. I have been as deaf as the adder to 
their request, knowing, to use a word of your grandmother, that you are too 
" outsetting " already. There is a time for all things under the sun, as the 
wise man says, and your time will yet come. 

I intend to go to the Bedford Springs this summer, if possible ; but as Con- 
gress may not adjourn until the 10th August, the fashionable season will then 
be over. I had thought of giving Mary and yourself a polite invitation to 
accompany me there ; but I fear it will be too late in the season for Mary to 
enact the character of a belle, and you are quite too young to make the attempt. 

Miss Hetty requests me to send her love to you, and to say that she 

would be very glad to see you in Washington I fear she might 

be twice glad, once on your arrival, and still more so on your departure. 
She will be in Lancaster in September. 

James Henry is here.* I intend to commence with him to-morrow 
and make him eat vegetables, or he shall have no meat. I have not yet 
determined upon a school for him. 

I wish you to embrace the first opportunity to remember me very kindly 
to Mrs. Franklin. I never hved beside a better or more agreeable neighbor. 
Give my love to Mary, though I perceive this is the second time, and Patt, 
and believe me ever to be 

Yours afi'ectionately, 

James Buchanan. 



* James Buchanan Henry : very averse as a boy to a vegetable diet. 



540 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Washington, July 19, 1847. 
My Dear Harriet : — 

The Secretary of the Treasury,* witli his mother-in-laAv, Mrs. Bache, and 
Miss Bache, will leave here for Rockaway, to enjoy the benefit of sea-bathing, 
on Thursday morning next. I know of no other opportunity of sending you, 
and this will be an excellent one. It is impossible for me to accompany you 
myself. I hope that the good sister Ceciha may permit you to leave with 
them. You will lose but a few days by this arrangement. Your clothes, if 
they should not be ready, can be placed in order at Rockaway under the 
direction of Mrs. Bache. Besides, it is uncertain how long our friends, the 
Pleasontons, may remain at Oyster Bay, and whether they will like it. Mr. 
Walker has hired a cottage at Rockaway, and you may remain with liis fam- 
ily as long as you please. 

I am extremely anxious that this arrangement should be made, because I 
know of no other means by which you can reach the sea-shore. If possible, 
please to send me an answer by the bearer. 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

Washington, July 8, 1848. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

I suppose you will now, within a week or ten days, return to the exhibi- 
tion, and we shall all be happy to see you. If you should not have good 
company all the way through, I could meet you in Baltimore without incon- 
venience almost any evening, leaving here in the cars at 5 o'clock p. m. You 
would arrive in Baltimore, probably, a little before my arrival ; but whoever 
might accompany you to Baltimore could take you to Barnum's until my 
arrival. If you should adopt this course, inform me certainly of the day you 
will leave Lancaster, so that there may be no mistake. 

We have no news here which would interest you. Everything has been 
quiet since you left. The Pleasontons and others often inquire of your health. 

I am glad to learn that Mary has turned out to be " a grand housekeeper." 
You could not have given me any more agreeable information. If she had 
proved to be idle and extravagant in youth, the promise of her age would 
have been poverty and dependence. There is no spectacle more agreeable to 
me than that of a j'oung married woman properly sensible of the important 
duties of her station, and acting upon those high principles which add lustre 
to the female character. Give her my kindest love, with my best respect to 
Mr. Baker. 

Remember me affectionately to James, and the family, and believe me to be 

Yours, as ever, 

James Buchanan. 



* The Hon. Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, Secretary of tlio Treasury under President 
Polk, appointed March 6, 1845. 



LETTERS TO HARRIET LANE. 541 

Washington, August 2, 1848. 
My Dear Harriet: — 

I have this moment received your letter of the 30th ultimo, and hasten to 
give it an answer. I regret very much that you are not pleased witli Rocka- 
way. You went there for the benefit of your health, under the advice of 
physicians, and I should be very sorry you should leave it without giving 
sea-bathing a fair trial. 

It is certainly out of the question for me to accompany you on a tour to 
West Point, Niagara, Boston, etc. If I should be able to leave Washington 
at all I cannot go to any place from which I could not immediately return in 
case of necessity. I require rest and quiet. Besides, iinder existing circum- 
stances, which I need not explain, I could not visit the States of New York 
and Massachusetts, unless it might be to pass through them quietly and 
rapidly. It is possible, if the weather should be suitable towards the close of 
August, that I may go to Saratoga for a few days ; but my movements are 
altogether uncertain. 

I am much gratified that you have acquitted yourself so handsomely as to 
obtain medals and premiums; and under other circumstances, I should cheer- 
fully accompany you on your travels. It is possible that I may take you to 
West Point. 

Miss Hetty is gradually, but slowly, recovering. Please to remember me 
very kindly to Mrs. Bache, Mrs. Walker, and the ladies, and believe me to be 

Yours aflFcctionately, 

James Buchanan. 

Washington, August 22, 1848. 

My Dear Harriet : — 

I have this moment received your letter of the 20th instant. I answered 
your former letter very soon after it was received, and am sorry that my 
answer miscarried. 

I expect sister Maria here to-day or to-morrow, and of course . 

At this moment I was interrupted by the agreeable information that she had 
arrived and I have just seen her. It is now four years since I enjoyed that 
pleasure. How long she will remain I do not know ; but it will be impossi- 
ble to leave before her departure. She will remain until Jamest shall receive 
his appointment in the revenue cutter service, which was kindly promised 
him by Mr. Walker, but which cannot be conferred until after the Presidents 
return, who is not expected until this day week, the 29th instant From 
present appearances I shall not be able to leave Washington before the first 
of September. I cannot, therefore, promise positively to visit Rockaway 
I hope you are enjoying yourself, and may be benefited in your health by 

the sea-bathing. 

* Mrs. Yates. t James Buchanan Yates. 



542 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Should I go to New York, I may take you as far as West Point. I pre- 
sume the season will be too late for the Saratoga Springs. 

Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Bache and the ladies, and believe me to be 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 



WAsmNGTON, January 8, 1849. 
My Dear Harriet : — 

You have acted wisely in controlling your inclinations and remaining at 
home. This act of self-restraint has raised you in my estimation. Let nothing 
divert you from your purpose. 

Washington now begins to be gay. Mrs. Walker is at home to-night, — 
the first assembly will be held to-morrow evening. Mrs. Polk gives a draw- 
ing-room on Wednesday evening; and on Thursday evening Miss Harris 
will be married, and there will be a party at Captain McCauley's at the Navy 
Yard. I now give dinners myself once a week. I rarely go out to evening 
parties. I have had my day of such amusement, and have enjoyed it. Yours 
is just commencing, and I hope it may be a happy one. I dare say Mr. Sul- 
livan* will be inconsolable when he learns that you will not be here durmg 
the present winter. 

I wish now to give you a caution. Never allow your affections to become 
interested or engage yourself to any person without my previous advice. You 
ought never to marry any man to whom you are not attached ; but you ought 
never to marry any person who is not able to afford you a decent and imme- 
diate support. In my experience, I have witnessed the long years of patient 
misery and dependence which fine women have endured from rushing pre- 
cipitately into matrimonial connections without suQicient reflection. Look 
ahead, and consider the future, and act wisely in this particular. 

Mrs. Pleasonton of Philadelphia left here on Saturday morning last. I saw 
her and her two daughters on Friday evening. They all inquired for you 
very aifectionately ; and the Pleasontons of this city are, I believe, sincerely 
anxious that you should pass some time with them. At a proper period you 
may enjoy this pleasure. 

It may be that I shall not reach Lancaster until the first of April, as I have 
some business to attend to here which may require a fortnight or three weeks 
after I shall be relieved from office. When I reach there, I shall be happy to 
have you with me. 

Yours affectionately, 

James Buchanan. 

P. S. — Give my love to Mary and all the rest. 



* John Sullivan, Esq., an Irish gentleman of advanced years, long a resident of Washing- 
ton, famous for his good dinners. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

1844— 1845. 

AN:NEXATI0N of TEXAS — election OE president polk — THE DEPARTMENT 
OF STATE ACCEPTED BY MB. BUCHANAN. 

I IN" the Presidential election of 1844, there was a third party 
in the field. By this time, the anti-slavery sentiment in 
some of the Korthern States liad taken the form of a political 
organization, which called itself the " Liberty " party, and was 
called by the others the party of the " Abolitionists." Their 
candidate for the Presidency was Mr. James G. Birney, of Ohio, 
a gentleman who had taken a leading part in organizing " The 
American Anti-Slavery Society," and was at this time its secre- 
tary. He had never held a pnblic office. Texas, which had in 
1836 made itself independent of Mexico, had been for more than 
nine years a slaveholding country, with a republican form of 
government. Between that government and the United States 
a secret treaty was negotiated, after Mr. Tyler became President, 
for the annexation of Texas to this Union. It had been sub- 
mitted to the Senate, and had been rejected, chiefly because 
Texas claimed to carry her western boundary to the Kio 
Grande ; and to incoi-porate her with the United States and to 
adopt that claim would, it was supposed, give Mexico a just 
cause for war. After the sudden death of Mr. Upshur,* who 
became Secretary of State v/hen Mr. Webster retired from 
President Tyler's cabinet, Mr. Calhoun, who succeeded him, 
took up and carried out a new negotiation, which Mr. Upshur 
had begun, for making Texas a part of the United States by the 
action of Congress. This project was pending, and more or less 
suspected, or believed not to have been relinquished, when the 
three parties made their nominations for the Presidency. The 



* Mr. Upshur was killed by the explosion on board the Princeton, in February, 1844. 
See ante, p. 521. 



544 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Democratic party, by the nomination of Mr. Polk, and by their 
avowed declarations, made the annexation of Texas distinctly 
one of their party measures. The Whigs, in nominating Mr. 
Clay, selected a candidate who was understood to oppose the 
annexation, not because Texas was a slaveholding country, but 
because it might lead to a war with Mexico. They did not 
proclaim it as a part of the policy of their party to prevent the 
annexation of any more slave territory. This was one of the 
principal reasons why Mr. Birney drew many votes away from 
Mr. Clay. As Mr. Polk obtained a majority of sixty-five 
electoral votes over Mr. Clay, and as six of tlie States which 
voted for him were Northern and non-slaveholding States, 
including both Pennsylvania and New York, the Democratic 
party claimed a right to say that the country had pronounced 
for the annexation of Texas, its slavery notwithstanding. The 
correspondence between the Government of the United States 
and Texas was submitted to Congress by President Tyler, in 
December, 1844. Joint resolutions for the annexation of Texas 
were finally adopted by Congress on the 1st of March, 1845. 
They admitted Texas into the Union, as a State whose consti- 
tution recognized slavery, and they also pledged the fiiith of the 
United States to allow of the future formation of four more 
States out of Texas, and to admit them into the Union, either 
with or without slavery, as their constitutions might require, if 
formed below the Missouri compromise line of 36° 30', but if 
formed above that line, slavery was to be excluded. In the 
Senate, there were twenty-seven votes for the admission of Texas 
on these conditions, and twenty-five votes against it ; of the 
affirmative votes, thirteen were from free States, and four of 
these were from New England. The Missouri compromise line 
was extended through Texas ; the " Wilmot Proviso," which 
aimed to exclude slavery from the whole of this newly acquired 
region, came up a year later. 

Mr. Buchanan's course as a Senator, on these resolutions, can 
easily be inferred from what has already appeared in regard to 
Ids sentiments on the whole subject of Texan independence, and 
the relations of that country to the United States. But the 
oflicial record shows, with entire distinctness, that against the 
constitutional objection which maintained that new States could 



ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 545 

not be admitted into the Union nnless they had lawfully arisen 
within the United States, he held with tliose v/ho rejected this 
restriction, and who maintained that a foreign State could be 
made a member of the Union. After the joint resolutions had 
come before the Senate from tlie House of Representatives the 
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, by a majority report, 
recommended their rejection. Mr. Buchanan, who was a mem- 
ber of that committee, did not make a minority report, but on 
the 27th of February (1845), he said : 



He did not rise to debate the question. He had heard some of his 
respected friends on this side of the Senate, in whose sincerity he had 
the most entire confidence, observe that if these resolutions should pass 
the Senate, the Constitution would receive a mortal stab. If Mr. B. thouo-ht 
so, great as was the acquisition we were about to make, he should be the last 
man in existence to acquire the richest benefit the world could hold out to our 
grasp at such a price. 

Mr. B. said he might have assumed the privilege of reply which belonged 
to him from the position he occupied on the Committee on Foreign Relations • 
but he waived it. Not because the arguments on the other side had not been 
exceedingly ingenious and plausible, and urged with great ability; but because 
all the reasoning in the world could not abolish the plain language of the Con- 
stitution, which declared that " new States might be admitted by Congress 
into the Union." But what new States ? The convention had answered that 
question in letters of light, by rejecting the proposed limitation of this grant, 
which would have confined it to States lawfully arising within the United 
States. The clause was introduced with this limitation, and, after full discus- 
sion, it ended in the shape it now held, without limitation or restriction of any 
kind. This was a historical fact. It could not be denied. Planting himself 
upon that fact, and having heard no argument which shook the position — 
believing, as he most conscientiously did believe, that the Constitution would 
not be violated in the least by the adoption of the pending resolutions, he here 
entered his solemn protest against the solemn protests which had been made 
on the other side, and which went almost the length of implying that he, and 
the advocates of these resolutions, were knowingly and of design violating the 
Constitution and their oaths, to secure a favorite political measure. This was 
the greatest public act in which Mr. Buchanan had ever had the honor of 
taking an humble part ; he should do it cheerfully, gladly, gloriously, because 
he beheved that his vote would confer blessings innumerable upon his fellow- 
men, now, henceforward, and forever. 

Mr. Berrien said he would not consent that this debate should close with 
the declaration of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Buchanan), that the 
convention had not determined the sense of the term " new States." 
I.— 35 



546 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Mr. Buchanan rose to explain. What the Senator from Pennsylvania did 
say -was, that at first the clause granting power to Congress to admit new 
States into the Union had been confined to States arising within tlie United 
States ; but that after debate and a full discussion, the Constitution was adopted 
•with the clause in its present clear unrestricted form, written as in letters of 
light. 

After some further remarks from other Senators, and some 
attempts to amend the resolutions, they were passed and en- 
grossed on the same day. President Tyler, on the 3d of 
March, announced by special message to the Senate, that he had 
approved and signed them.* 

The electoral college of Pennsylvania, when the votes of that 
State were given to Mr. Polk, united in a strong recommenda- 
tion to him to make Mr. Buchanan Secretary of State. Mr. 
Buchanan took no steps to influence the newly-elected Presi- 
dent in regard to this or any other cabinet appointment. He 
maintained a dignified reserve in his personal relations to 
Mr. Polk, both during and after the election. Certainly there 
were very strong reasons of fitness, which should have led 
Mr. Polk to desire that Mr. Buchanan would accept the De- 
partment of State. His qualifications for it were far greater 
than those of any other public man in the Democratic party ; 
and, if such a consideration could have any weight, he personally 
deserved at the hands of Mr. Polk all that a President could 
bestow of opportunity to render further service to the country. 
In looking back over Mr. Buchanan's public life, now covering 
a period of nearly twenty-five years, one can perceive the in- 
tellectual growth of an American statesman, who had not been 
taken suddenly from private pursuits to fill an important pub- 
lic position, but who had been trained by the regular gradations 
of office for the affairs of government. To have a constituency 
who can appreciate the value of such a training, and can sup- 
port a public servant in the devotion of his time and abilities 
to the public service, is a great advantage. This advantage 
Mr. Buchanan had enjoyed for twenty-five years, and he 
had well repaid the devotion of his friends. The people of 
Pennsylvania had but once in twenty years swerved from the 

* Congressional Globe, Vol. 14, pp. WO, 271, 363. The resolutions may be found at page 333. 



APPOINTED SECRETARY OF STATE. 547 

party in which Mr. Buchanan was a distinguished leader, and 
they had now returned to it. His experience, his aptitude for 
public life, his solid, though not brilliant abilities, and the 
weight of the great State which had kept him in the Senate, 
marked him as the fittest person to be at the head of Mr. Polk's 
eal)inet. Mr. Polk, however, while conscious of the propriety 
of offering this position to Mr. Buchanan, and while he felt the 
need of his services, seems to have had a fear lest his adminis- 
tration might be disturbed by Mr. Buchanan's ambition to be- 
come his successor. lie took the somewhat singular step of 
asking from Mr. Buchanan a promise that he would retire from 
the cabinet, if he should be a candidate for the Presidency in 
1848. There is no good reason for attributing this to personal 
jealousy of Buchanan, for Mr. Polk did not expect to become a 
candidate for re-election. He was a sagacious man, who took 
a just view of his own situation. He knew quite well that he 
had become President because the conflicting claims of others 
had rendered it necessary to compromise upon an unexpected 
and far from conspicuous candidate. But he desired, and wisely 
desired, to avoid all internal difficulties, by freeing his adminis- 
tration from complications about the succession. Every one 
will commend the spirit of the following letter, and every one, 
it should seem, will commend the manner in which it was met 
by Mr. Buchanan, who could hardly be expected to say that he 
would renounce all idea of becoming a candidate for the Presi- 
dency in 1848, since he could not tell what his public duty 
might "require of him. 

[mR. polk to MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington City, February 17, 1845. 
Sir:— 

The principles and policy which will be observed and maintained during 
my administration are embodied in the resolutions adopted by the Demo- 
cratic National Convention of delegates, assembled at Baltimore in Maryland, 
and in the inaugural address which I propose to deliver to my fellow-citizens 
on assuming the duties of President of tlie United States, and which is here- 
with handed to you for your perusal. 

In making up my cabinet, I desire to select gentlemen who will agree 
with me in opinion, and who will cordially co-operate with me in carrying 
out these principles and policy. 



548 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

In my ofScial action I will take no part between gentlemen of the Demo- 
cratic party who may become aspirants or candidates to succeed me in the 
Presidential office, and desire that no member of my cabinet shall do so. In- 
dividual preferences it is not expected or desired to limit or restrain. It is 
official interference by the dispensation of public patronage or otherwise that 
I desire to guard against. Should any member of my cabinet become a can- 
didate for the Presidency or Vice Presidency of the United States, it will be 
expected upon the happening of such an event, that he will retire from the 
cabinet. 

I disapprove the practice which has sometimes prevailed, of cabinet officers 
absenting themselves for long periods of time from the seat of Government 
and leaving the management of their department to chief clerks ; or other less 
responsible persons than themselves. I expect myself to remain constantly at 
Washington, unless it may be that no public duty requires my presence, when 
I may be occasionally absent, but then only for a short time. It is by con- 
forming to this rule that the President and his cabinet can have any assurance 
that absences will be prevented, and that the subordinate executive officers 
connected with them respectively will faithfully perform their duty. 

If sir, you concur with me in these opinions and views, I shall be pleased 
to have your assistance in my administration, as a member of my cabinet, and 
now tender to you the office of Secretary of State, and invite you to take 
charge of that department. 

I am, Avith great respect, your obedient servant, 

James K. Polk. 



[mR. EUCnAXAN TO MR. POLK.] 

Washington, February IS, 1845. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I feel greatly honored by your kind invitation to accept the station of 
Secretary of State in your cabinet ; and I cheerfully and cordially approve the 
terms on which this offijr has been made, as they have been presented in your 
note of yesterday. To prevent, however, any possible misunderstanding 
between us hereafter, I desire to make an explanation in regard to that por- 
tion of your letter which requires that any member of your cabinet shall retire 
upon becoming a candidate for the Presidency. 

Before I had anticipated that you would do me the honor of inviting me to 
a seat in your cabinet, I had publicly presented my views on the subject of 
agitating the question of the next Presidency in the strongest colors. Both 
patriotism and policy, the success of the party as well as that of your admin- 
istration, require that we should have repose from the strife of making Presi- 
dents. I am, therefore, utterly opposed to the agitation of this question in 
any shape or form, and shall exercise any influence which I may possess to pre- 
vent it, both in regard to myself and others. Nay, more, I think the welfare 
of your administration requires that in every pi'udent and appropriate manner 



LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. 549 

this principle should be maintained by it ; and the patronage of the Govern- 
ment ought to be dispensed, not to favor any individual aspirant, but solely for 
the good of the country and the Democratic party. 

I do not know that I shall ever desire to be a candidate for the Presidency. 
Most certainly I never yet strongly felt such an inclination; and I have been 
willing, and should at this moment be vpilling, to accept a station which would, 
in ray estimation of what is proper, deprive me of any prospect of reaching 
that office. Still, I could not, and would not, accept the high and honorable 
office to which you have called me, at the expense of self-ostracism. My 
friends would unanimously condemn me were I to pursue this course. I cannot 
proclaim to the world that in no contingency shall I be a candidate for the 
Presidency in 1848 ; nor in the meantime can I be held responsible for the 
action of occasional county meetings, in my own or other States, preceding 
general elections, which, without my previous knowledge or consent, might 
jjresent my name in connection with this office. I can answer for myself that 
as I have never yet raised a finger or stirred a step, towards the attainment 
of this station ; so I never shall make any personal exertions for that purpose 
without your express permission, so long as I remain a member of your 
cabinet. If, however, unexpectedly to myself, the people should by a State 
or national convention present me as their candidate, I cannot declare in 
advance that I would not accede to their wishes ; but in that event I would 
retire from your cabinet, unless you should desire me to remain. 

I do not deny that I would be as much pleased to accept the station of 
Secretary of State from yourself as from any man living. I entertain a strong 
conviction that under the controlling direction of your wisdom, prudence and 
firmness, I might be useful to you in conducting the Department of State, 
and I know from your established character, so far as it is given to mortals to 
know anything, that our social and personal intercourse would be of the most 
friendly and agreeable character. 

If under these explanations, you are -willing to confer upon me the office of 
Secretary of State, I shall accept it with gratitude, and exert my best efibrts 
to do my duty to the country and to yourself. 

With sentiments of the highest and most sincere respect, I remain. 

Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



In 1858, there again came about rumors of General Jackson's 
hostility to Mr. Buchanan. The following letter written by a 
citizen of Nashville to a friend, gives decisive evidence on 
General Jackson's feelings towards Mr. Buchanan, at the time 
when the latter became Secretary of State. 



550 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[mR. JOHNSON TO GENERAL ANDERSON.] 

Nashville, Oct. 6tb, 1858. 
Dear Sir: — 

I received your letter of the 5th inst, making inquiries of my recollection 
as to the feelings entertained by General Jackson towards Mr. Buchanan at 
the time of the nomination of Mr. Polk and the appointment of Mr. Buchanan 
as Secretary. I do not remember to have met General Jackson after the 
election of Mr. Polk, but Avas upon the most intimate terms with President 
Polk, both before and after his election. General Jackson was the avowed 
and open friend of Mr. Van Buren, and when it was ascertained that Mr. 
Van Buren could not get the nomination, he expressed himself to many 
friends favorable to the nomination of Mr. Buchanan, as the ti'ue and proper 
course of the Democratic party, before Mr. Polk's name was known to be 
before the convention for the Presidency. This I have heard from so many 
sources as to entertain no doubt of the fact. Mr. Polk, it is well known, 
consulted with him freely as to the individuals who should compose his cabi- 
net, and the appointment of Mr. Buchanan as Secretary of State met his 
decided approbation, as did all the other individuals composing the cabinet, 
excepting the Secretary of the Treasury. He had some misgivings and appre- 
hensions as to the propriety of the selection, as did many others of the friends 
of President Polk. 

These are my recollections from the most free and unreserved intercourse 
with President Polk, and my recollection now is that I have seen letters 
from General Jackson to President Polk confirming substantially the above 
statement. 

General Jackson was known to have strong feelings — warm towards his 
friends, bitter towards his enemies — and in the exciting canvasses for the 
Presidency may have used, and even written, harsh expressions about many 
prominent friends of his own, founded upon 2)erversions and misrepresentations 
of their conduct by those toadies with whom he was beset, and often deceived 
by them as to the conduct and expressions of leading and prominent men in 

the Democratic party, and by none of them so often as by • and , 

who never deserved his confidence or merited the favors bestowed on them. 

The General, however, never hesitated to do justice to any man when the 
truth was ascertained as to his conduct. 

From the whole of my intercourse with General Jackson and Mr. Polk, 
after the second election of General Jackson, I never had reason to suppose 
that he ever had any unkind feelings toward Mr. Buchanan. On the contrary, 
Mr. Buchanan was considered in the Senate one among his most active and 
confidential friends, as President Polk was in the House of Representatives. 

Mr. Polk, or Buchanan, could neither be used nor controlled by such men 
as and , and hence their hostility to them after the second elec- 
tion of General Jackson, which was manifested in various ways which I could 
specify. I am, very respectfully, your friend, 

E. Johnson. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

1845— 1846. 

THE OREGON CONTROVEKSY — DANGER OP A WAR WITH ENGLAND — NEGO- 
TIATION FOR A SETTLEMENT OF THE BOUNDARY — PRIVATE CORRE- 
SPONDENCE. 

AMO]N'G the subjects involved in the foreign relations of the 
- country, when Mr. Buchanan became Secretary of State, 
and which demanded his immediate attention, one of the most 
important and critical was the title to the territory of Oregon, 
that had long been in dispute between Great Britain and the 
United States. The northern boundary of this region of coun- 
try, which should have sej)arated British America west of the 
Rocky Mountains from the dominion of the United States, had 
not been settled by the treaty negotiated at Washington between 
the two powers in 1842, because Lord Ashburton had no 
instructions to deal with it. As far back as the administration 
of President Monroe, an extension of the 49th parallel of lati- 
tude to the Pacific, as the boundary, was offered by the United 
States to England, but it was declined. The British claim was 
founded on the assertion that the title of the United States, 
which was derived through the Louisiana and Plorida treaties, 
was not exclusive as to any part of the territory ; and since it 
was for the interest of the Hudson Bay Company to follow the 
Columbia River to the ocean, and since the English asserted an 
actual and previous occupation as well as the Americans, it 
became desirable for England to have a right of joint occupa- 
tion established, until the boundary between the two national 
possessions should be finally settled. A convention was entered 
into in 1827, establishing such a joint occupation until notice 
of its termination should be given by either of the two powers. 
This concession on the part of the United States, made in the 



552 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

interest of peace, left an open question between the two govern- 
ments, both claiming the whole territory. But what was " the 
whole " of Oregon ? On the American side of the controversy, 
the region claimed extended to a line that would be marked by 
the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude. This would have carried 
the American title on the Pacific coast far above the Strait of 
Fuca and Vancouver's Island, and would have made an irregu- 
lar boundary, not coinciding in latitude with the northern 
boundary of the United States east of the Kochy Mountains. 
On the other hand, the claim of England brought her down to 
the mouth of the Columbia Eiver, ^vhich has its source nearly 
at the 50th parallel, and flows in a circuitous course of about 
eight hundred miles, first to the south, and then to the west, 
until it reaches the Pacific. The joint occupation agreed upon 
in 1S2T, had become inconvenient, and indeed dangerous for 
both nations. A very uneasy feeling sprang up in our Western 
States and among the settlers who were pushing into this terri- 
torv, and who looked to the United States for titles to the land, 
and for the i^rotection due from the sovereign power. Popular 
opinion about our riglit.was not likely to be founded in intelli- 
gent investigation, but it was sure to find its way into the 
political action of the Democratic party. The political body 
which nominated Mr. Polk as its candidate for the Presidency, 
proclaimed our title to be "clear and unquestionable." Mr. 
Polk considered himself as elected under an imperative popular 
instruction to assert this claim, and in his inaugural address he 
put it forth in very strong terms as extending to the parallel of 
54° 40'. This was the attitude of the matter when Mr. Buchanan 
became Secretary of State. 

^N'otwithstanding the strong personal convictions of the Presi- 
dent and the Secretary of State of the validity of this claim as 
it was asserted in Mr. Polk's inaugural address, deference for 
the action of former administrations and a desire to avoid a 
rupture with England, led the President to authorize Mr. 
Buchanan to offer the 49th parallel as the boundary. This 
offer was made to Mr. Pakenham, the British Minister at 
Washington, on the IGth of Julv, 1845. Without referring this 
offer to his owm government and awaiting mstructions, Mr. 
Pakenham replied on the 30th of July, that " after this expo- 



THE OREaON CONTROVERSY. 553 

sition of the views entertained by the British government 
respecting the relative value and importance of the British and 
American claims, the American Plenipotentiary will not be 
surprised to hear that the undersigned does not feel at liberty 
to accept the proposal offered by the American Plenipotentiary 
for the settlement of the question." He closed his note by 
expressing his " trust that the American Plenipotentiary \vill 
be prepared to offer some further proposal for the settlement of 
the Oregon question, more consistent with fairness and equity, 
and with the reasonable expectations of the British govern- 
ment." These were very unfortunate expressions, since they 
implied, under the circumstances, that the American Govern- 
ment had begun the negotiation by asserting a claim that was 
nntenable, and had followed its assertion with an unfair and 
inequitable offer. Had this language of the British plenipoten- 
tiary become public at that moment, the consequences would 
have been an uncontrollable excitement throughout this country. 
Careful, however, to keep open the door for mutual concessions, 
Mr. Buchanan, before he answered Mr. Pakenham's note, 
wrote to Mr. McLane, who had succeeded Mr. Everett as United 
States Minister in London, an elaborate despatch, tracing the 
diplomatic history of the Oregon question, and suggesting, with 
much skill, the modes in which an unfortunate result might be 
avoided. Indefatigably industrious, and employing no pen but 
his own, he gave to his official papers a polish, the marks of 
which remain on the original drafts, attesting the extreme care 
that he bestowed upon them. Mr. McLane was instructed to 
make known the contents of this despatch to the British 
ministry, in case they made inquiries of him. 

The offer of the 49th parallel having been withdrawn, Mr. 
Buchanan, on the 30th of August, addressed a note to Mr. 
Pakenham, in which he reasserted the American claim to 
what he regarded as " the whole of Oregon," and made an elab- 
orate and exhaustive exposition of its grounds. There are few 
papers on the diplomatic records of our Government more 
able and searching than this exposition of the American claim 
to the territory of Oregon. Thoroughly master of his subject, 
and fully convinced of the validity of the claim which he was 
asserting, Mr. Buchanan wrote this paper with a dignified force 



554 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

that was not unlikely to command the assent of impartial per- 
sons, when the document should become public. Writing to 
Mr. McLane afterwards, he said : " this note of Mr. Pakenham 
(July 30th) became the subject of grave deliberation by the 
President. Upon a full cousideration of the whole question, 
and after waiting a month, he deemed it to be a duty which he 
owed to his country to withdraw his proposition (of the 49th 
parallel), which he had submitted, and to mamtain the right of 
the United States to the whole of Oregon. This was done by 
my note to Mr. Pakenham of the 30th of August last." 

But the note of August 30th could not become public while 
the negotiation was pending, or before the meeting of Congress 
in December. In the mean time, Mr. Pakenham endeavored 
to have the American offer of the 4:9th parallel restored. 
'' Judging from late conversations with Mr. Pakenham," Mr, 
Buchanan again writes to Mr. McLane, " he is now anxious 
that this withdrawal should be withdrawn, and that the negotia- 
tion might proceed as if our offer were still in force. But the 
President will not consent to change his position and to recall 
what has already been done. He will not renew his former 
offer, nor submit any new proposition ; and it must remain for 
the British government to decide what other or further steps, if 
any, they may think proper to take in the negotiation. The 
President has adopted this determination after two cabinet 
councils, and he deems it necessary that this should be communi- 
cated to you, in order that you may clearly understand his 
pui'pose." 

The correspondence was submitted by the President to Con- 
gress, in December (1S45), and its publication was immediately 
followed in this country by a considerable change of feeling in 
those quarters where the course of the administration was 
watched with most jealousy, and where war was most dreaded. 
In the House of liepresentatives, where the war feeling of the 
N'orthwest found expression, some violent speeches were made. 
In the Senate there was a moderate tone, but steps were taken 
looking to the termination of the joint occupation, and to an 
inquiry into the state of the national defences. These move- 
ments had an ominous appearance. In the diplomatic depart- 
ment, however, the negotiation -went on quietly. 



THE OREGON CONTROVERSY. 555 

On the 23d of December, Mr. Buchanan made the following 
brief minute of a cabinet consultation held on that day, at 
which the President said : 

If Mr. Pakenham inquires if a new proposition made by them would be 
respectfully considered, I would refer him to tlie correspondence — ^your last 
note of the 30th August, and say it has been at your option, with a perfect 
liberty to propose any proposition you thought proper, and you had no reason 
to conclude from what had occurred here that the Government would not 
have treated such a proposition with respectful consideration when made. 
You have made no new proposition, and the question, therefore, stands on its 
present attitude. 

December 23, 1845. — I took down the foregoing from the lips of the 
President, in the presence of the cabinet. 

Four days afterward an interview took place at tlie State 
Department, of which I find the following account in Mr. 
Buchanan's hand- writing : 

On Saturday afternoon, 27th of December, 1845, Mr. Pakenham called at 
the Department of State. After some brief preliminary conversation on 
other topics, he informed me that he had received instructions from his gov- 
ernment relative to the Oregon question; without at the time informing 
me what they were. He then proceeded to express his desire that I should 
recall the withdrawal of our offer to settle the Oregon question by the 49th 
parallel of latitude, and suffer the negotiation to proceed on that basis, 
expressing the belief that it might then result in a satisfactory manner. I 
informed him that he had made one proposition to Mr. Calhoun, which had 
been rejected; that I had made a proposition which had been rejected by 
him and then withdrawn ; that the whole negotiation had been submitted to 
Congress with the President's message ; and after all this, it was too late to 
expect that the President Avould now retrace his steps. That what had been 
done must be considered as done. 

He then said that if he were now to make a new proposition, he had no 
means of knowing whether it Avould be accepted : if he made a proposition 
it might be rejected. 

I replied that the whole field was open to him, as it had been in the 
beginning; that it was as free to him as it had been to him at first, or was to 
me afterwards, to make any proposition he thought proper ; that all I could 
say was that any proposition he might make would be respectfully considered 
by the President ; but I said no more. 

He then observed that as I was not willing to go further (as I understood 
him), he would, under his instructions, present me the offer of the British 
government to arbitrate the question. He said it was drawn up chiefly in 
the very language of Lord Aberdeen. 



556 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

I then received the communication from him, and read it over carefully. As 
soon as I had completed its perusal, he urged its acceptance strongly ; ex- 
pressed his great desire for the preservation of peace between the two countries, 
and said that it was impossible that war should grow out of such a question 
between two great nations. He said he was not worth much m the world ; 
but would give half what he was worth to see the question honorably and 
amicably adjusted between the two nations. 

I stated the strong desire, both on the part of the President and myself, 
that the question might be amicably and honorably adjusted. That we had 
every disposition that this result might be attained. I observed, however, 
that if ever this was accomplished, I thought it must be by negotiation, and 
not by arbitration ; and especially such an arbitration as he proposed.. That 
both the President and myself were firmly convinced of the validity of our 
title up to 54° 40' ; and yet his proposition to arbitrate assumed the right 
to a portion of the territory on the part of Great Britain, and left it to 
the arbitrator alone to decide in what manner the territory should be divided 
between the parties. That this alone, I thought, would be a sufficient reason 
for the rejection of his proposition, even if others did not exist, of which he 
must be aware from our previous conversations on the subject ; but I would 
consult the President, and give him an answer with as little delay as possible. 
He intimated rather than expressed a wish that his answer might be com- 
municated to him in time for the packet (Monday). I told him that a proper 
respect for the British government required that the answer should be well 
considered ; that the cabinet would not meet again before Tuesday, and I 
could not encourage him to expect the answer before Saturday next. He 
said he had no doubt my answer would be well considered. He hoped that 
in it I would not assert a claim to the whole territory, and Saturday next 
would be in time. 

He then branched off, and said that the proposition was to refer the ques- 
tion to a state as well as a sovereign ; he said that this had been done on 
purpose to get clear of the objection to crowned heads. I asked him to whom 
he thought it might be referred if not to a sovereign. He suggested the Re- 
public of Switzerland, or the government of Hamburg or Bremen. I told 
him that whilst my own inclinations were strongly against arbitration; if I 
were compelled to select an arbitrator, it would be the Pope. That both 
nations were heretics, and the Pope would be impartial. This he appeared at' 
first to take seriously, — he said the Pope was a temporal sovereign ; but I 
thought he was disinclined to select him as an arbitrator. He perceived, 
however, that I was not in earnest, and suggested that the reference might 
be made to commissioners from both countries. I told him I thought it was 
vain to think of arbitration ; because, even if the President were agreed to it, 
which I felt pretty certain he was not, no such treaty could pass the Senate. 
That the pursuit of arbitration would only involve the question in new diffi- 
culties. He then suggested the mediation of a third power in the adjustment 
of the question. I told him that was an idea which he had never suggested 



THE OREGON CONTROVERSY. 557 

before, and on which I could say nothing. He observed that this, together 
with his suggestion of commissioners, came from himself and had not been 
embraced in his instructions. He said that a mediator who would interfere 
might share the fate of the man who interfered between two other men who 
were fighting, when both fell upon him and gave him a sound drubbing. 

He remarked that the affair might remain just where it was, and the 
British government would not disturb it. He did not entertain serious appre- 
hensions of war. 

He then told me that he had met Judge Douglas at Mr. Cox's party the 
other evening, and had a good deal of conversation with him about his. 
bill. 

He objected to a promise of a grant of lands to actual settlers in Oregon, 
and to the erection of forts by the Government within it, as violations of the 
treaty. I told him I had formed no decided opinion as to the promise of 
grants of land ; but as to the forts, it was very clear, in my opinion, that we 
had a right to erect them. We did not purpose to erect fortifications capable 
of enduring a siege in civilized warfare ; but merely stockade forts to protect 
our emigrants from the savages. That the Hudson's Bay Company had erected 
many such forts, and we surely had the right under the treaty to do what 
they had done. He observed that the settlers might do this themselves as 
the Company had done. I replied that they were too poor ; that this Com- 
pany had the entire government in its hands ; and surely we might do what 
they had done. I observed that this was ever the way with Great Britain, 
she was always fettered by monopolies ; and if it were not for the Com- 
pany they would at once give us our rights to the whole country up to 
54° 40'. He said that the Hudson's Bay Company had rights in Oregon 
which must be protected; but I understood him to admit that they did inter- 
pose an obstacle in the way of the settlement of the question. He said the 
British government would be glad to get clear of the question on almost any 
terms; that they did not care if the arbitrator should award the whole terri- 
tory to us. They would yield it without a murmur. I said I had no doubt of 
this. They never played the pait of the fox : but always of the hon. They 
would preserve their faith inviolate. He said they wished for peace; but 
intimated that this was not our wish. I asked him why we should desire 
war. Would not their superiority at sea give them command of the coasts of 
Oregon. Yes, he said, that was true, but the war would not be confined to 
that region. That he would willingly make a bargain to fight it out with us 
there, if we would agree to that. 

On tlie 26tli of February (1846), Mr. Buchanan addressed an 
elaborate official despatch to Mr. McLane, explaining fully the 
reasons which had led the President to decline to make the 
boundary of Oregon a subject of arbitration, and suggesting 
what it would be practicable for the President to agree upon, 



558 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

if proposed by the British government. Mr. McLane was au- 
thorized to make known to Lord Aberdeen the contents of this 
despatch ; and between its date and the 1st of June, Sir Eobert 
Peel's government determined to send to Washington the pro- 
ject of a convention which is described in a despatch addressed 
to Mr. J. Randolph Clay on the 13th of June, and which is 
given below. The despatch of February 26th, to Mr. McLane, 
was accompanied by a private letter of the same date. On the 
Gth of June, another private letter to Mr. McLane informed 
him of the President's purpose to submit Lord Aberdeen's pro- 
ject to the Senate, and the despatch of June 13th to Mr. Clay 
gives the result. 

[mR. BUCHANAN TO HON. LOUIS McLANE.] 

Washington, Ftb. 2G, 1S45. 
My Dear Sir: — 

The brief space left to me before the departure of our messenger to Boston 

shall be devoted to writing you a private letter By my despatch 

you will be made distinctly acquainted with the ground which the President 
has determined to maintain on the Oregon question ; and I do not perceive, 
after what has passed, how he could do more than submit a British proposi- 
tion, based on the parallel of 49°, to the Senate. From all I can learn, there 
is not the least doubt but that either of the two propositions specified in my 
despatch would receive the previous sanction of a constitutional majority of 
that body. I say the previous sanction, for reasons which I have not the 
time to give you. All that I apprehend is, that the British government, in 
their offer, may insist on the perpetual free navigation of the Columbia. This 
would indeed be truly embarrassing; and all your diplomacy should be 
exerted to prevent it. The President would not present such a proposition to 
the Senate, unless he should greatly change his mind ; and if he should, I do 
not believe that two-thirds of that body would give it their sanction. 

I am convinced that the Oregon question is rapidly reaching that point 
when it must, if ever, be peaceably settled. Although what I have said to 
you of the present disposition of the Senate is strictly true, it is uncertain how 
long this may continue. Public opinion on this subject is far in advance of 
Congress. I am convinced that if the question should remain open untd the 

Congressional elections next fall, this would be clearly evinced In 

Great Britain they form their judgment of popular opinion from what they 
read in the newspapers, chiefly Whig, of our large commercial cities. This 
you know to be a mistake. The commercial interest which, in a great degree 
controls these papers, has a direct interest in the preservation of peace, and 
especially with Great Britain. The strong and irresistible public opinion 



THE OREGON CONTROVERSY. 559 

throughout the vast iaterior of our country, which controls the action of the 
G-overnment, is but little, if at all, afiected by the considerations which influ- 
ence the mercantile community. General Cass and Mr. Allen, who are both 
candidates for popular fovor, the one immediately and the other prospectively, 
will not consent to accept the parallel of 49°. The two Senators from Indi- 
ana, the two from Illinois, and one from Missouri (not Colonel Benton), occupy 
the same ground. 

Mr. Calhoun, from a variety of circumstances, came to the Senate with a 
flush of popularity, which might have rendered him highly useful, both to 
himself and to his country ; but, already, it is nearly all gone. He at once 
took open and bold ground against the notice, and propagated his opinions 
with that degree of zeal which belongs to his character. He succeeded in 
inducing a small number of Democrats in the House, chiefly Virginians to 
vote against the notice ; and such is now the weight of pubUc opinion in its 
favor, that it is said he would vote for it himself, but for the awkward dilemma 
in which this would place his friends in the House. The truth is, that the 
discreet friends of peace clearly perceive that the question must be settled 
peaceably within the year, or war may be the consequence. In some form 
or other it will pass the Senate by a large majority ; and many anticipate an 
almost unanimous vote. I do not believe this. I have always liked Mr. Cal- 
houn very much, and am truly sorry that he did not adopt a wiser course. He 
must have been the great man of our party in the Senate. Colonel Benton's 
conduct and speech on the Oregon question are entitled to warm commenda- 
tion. Tour son Robert is winning laurels for himself in the Maryland legis- 
lature. He is indeed a fine fellow, and a worthy chip of the old block. 

I have for years been anxious to obtain a seat on the bench of the Su- 
preme Court. This has been several times witliin my power ; but circum- 
stances have always prevented me from accepting the offered boon. I cannot 
desert the President, at the present moment, against his protestations. If the 
Oregon question should not be speedily settled, the vacancy must be filled ; 
and then farewell to my wishes. 

Please to remember me in the kindest terms to Mrs. McLane, 

and believe me, as ever, to be, sincerely and respectfully, 

Your friend, 

James Buchanan. 

[BUCHANAN TO McLANE.] 

(Private and Confidential.) Washington, June 6, 1846. 

My Dear Sir: — 

I have but little time to scribble you a private letter before the closing of 
the mail to go by the Great Britain. 

The President has determined to submit Lord Aberdeen's project to the 
Senate. He had no alternative, as you know, between this and its absolute 
rejection. 



560 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAJ^. 

The proviso to the first article would seem to render it questionable 
whether both parties would have the right to navigate the Strait of Fuca as 
an arm of the sea, north of the parallel of 49^ ; neither does it provide that 
the line shall pass through the Canal de Arro, as stated in your despatch. 
This would probably be the fair construction. 

The article relating to the possessions of British occupants south of 49° is 
vague and indefinite; and in order to prevent disputes between the two 
governments hereafter, as to the extent of these possessions, it would seem 
to be a prudent precaution to provide some means of ascertaining the rights 
of these occupants respectively. There is no reciprocal provision in the treaty 
for American settlers north of 49°. There may be none there ; but yet such 
a provision would give the convention a fairer appearance. 

The right of the Hudson's Bay Company to the navigation of the Columbia 
presents the important difficulty. It is considered doubtful by the President 
and several members of the cabinet whether under the terms of the projet 
this right would not expire upon the termination of the existing charter of 
that company in 1859. 

The President's message will reiterate the opinions expressed in his annual 
message in favor of our title to 54° 40'; but in consideration of and in defer- 
ence to the contrary opinions expressed by the Senate, his constitutional 
advisers, he submits the projet to them for their previous advice. He may 
probably suggest some modifications. 

What the Senate may do in the premises is uncertain. There undoubtedly 
is in that body a constitutional majority in favor of settling the question on 
the parallel of 49° to the Straits of Fuca. The question of the perpetual 
navigation of the Columbia is and ought to be the point of difiiculty. Should 
the Senate modify this article so as to limit the right to the termination of the 
existing charter of the Hudson's Bay Company, I can scarcely suppose that 
the modification would be rejected by the British government. 

I sincerely hope that you may not think of leaving London until the ques- 
tion shall be finally settled ; and I am happy to learn fiom Robert that your 
continuance in London will not be prejudicial to your private interest at home. 

With my kindest respects to Mrs. McLane, I remain sincerely and respect- 
fully your friend, 

James Buchanan. 



[mR. BUCHANAN TO JOHN RANDOLPH CLAY, ESQ.] 

.1 



No. 2. Department of State, 

Sir:— 



Washington, June 13, 1846. 



The Oregon question may now be considered as settled. On the 6th 
instant Mr. Pakenham presented to me the project of a convention for its 
adjustment : and the President, after mature deliberation, determined, in pur- 
suance of several precedents adopted in the early history of our Grovernment, 



THE OREGON CONTROVERSY. 5G1 

to submit it to the Senate for their previous advice. This was done by a con. 
fideutial message on the 10th instant, of which I transmit you a copy. 

On the 12th instant the Senate adopted a resolution by a vote of 37 to 12, 
of which the following is a copy : 

" Resolved (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring) that the Presi- 
dent of the United States be, and he is hereby, advised to accept the proposal 
of the British government accompanying his message to the Senate, dated 10th 
June, 1846, for a convention to settle boundaries, etc., between the United 
States and Great Britain, west of the Rocky or Stony Mountains." 

The convention will be signed by the plenipotentiaries on Monday next : 
and in the course of the next week will doubtless be ratified by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, 

The terms are, an extension of the 49th parallel of latitude to the middle 
of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, thence 
along the middle of this channel and the Strait of Fuca, so as to surrender the 
whole of that island to Great Britain. 

The navigation of the Columbia is conceded, not to British subjects gener- 
ally, but to the Hudson's Bay Company and those trading with it. To this 
concession there is no express limitation of time ; but it was believed by the 
Senate, that under the true construction of the projet this grant will expire 
on the 30th May, 1859, the date of the termination of the existing license to 
that Company, to trade with the Indians, etc., on the North-west Coast of 
America. 

I need not enumerate the other less important particulars. 

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, 

James Buchanan. 

"While in December 1845 many political friends and oppo- 
nents in all parts of the country were reading with approbation 
the correspondence on the Oregon question, so far as it had 
been published, an approbation which appears from a great 
multitude of private letters addressed to Mr. Buchanan, he thus 
wrote confidentially to Mr. McLane : 

" I should this day [December 13th] have been on the bench of the Su- 
preme Court, had it not been for the critical state of our foreign relations. I 
very much desired the position, because it would have enabled me to spend 
the remainder of my days in peace. I have now been on the stormy deep 
nearly a quarter of a century. Besides, I sincerely wished, if possible, to 
prevent my name being even mentioned in connection with the next Presi- 
dency." 

The vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court of the 
United States was occasioned by the death of Mr. Justice 
I— 36 



563 LIFE OF JAMES B'JCHANAN. 

Baldwin. According to an invariable custom the appointment 
sliould be made from the Pennsylvania circuit. There were 
persons who desired, not without a mixture of motives, that Mr. 
Buchanan might receive it ; for his transfer to the bench ^vould, 
it was assumed, bring into the Department of State a gentleman 
whose friends were exceedingly anxious to have him in that 
position. Others wished Buchanan to be out of the cabinet, 
without much reference to the question of who was to be his 
successor. There came about a kind of intrigue, to produce a 
public belief that he was to be appointed a judge, in order that 
it might be considered as a foregone conclusion and appear to 
be called for by the general voice. Some of Mr. Buchanan's 
friends, of both political parties, believing that he had eminent 
qualifications for the judicial office, urged him to accept the 
ofter, if it sliould be made to him ; others, who had just as 
strong convictions that he would be a great acquisition to the 
bench, were not willing to have him retire from political life, 
and were earnestly opposed to his leaving the Department of 
State at that time. The great body of the discreet friends of 
the administration took the same view. The matter was kept 
open for a long time, and meanwhile Mr. Buchanan, uncertain 
of his own future, had to go on and manage the foreign rela- 
tions of the country, in which, besides the Oregon question, the 
state of things consequent upon the proposed annexation of 
Texas and the other difficulties with Mexico, of which I shall 
treat hereafter, became extremely perplexing. That he M'ould 
have preferred the safe retirement of the bench to anything that 
political oflice could give him, and that he would have re- 
nounced all further connection with politics if he had received 
this appointment, cannot be doubted. Having had occasion 
thus far to estimate the qualities of his mind and character, 
I may here express the opinion, that he would have been a 
highly useful and distinguished judge. If this change in the 
course of his life had taken place, he would never have become 
President of the United States, and his biography, if written, 
would have been only that of a man who had been very emi- 
nent in political life to the age of forty-six, and had then passed 
the remainder of his days in the tranquillity of a judicial career, 
giving more or less proof of the versatility of his powers. lie 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 563 

believed that it would be a gain of happiness to escape from the 
stormy coutlicts of the political sphere. But public men can 
rarely do more than "rough-hew their ends;" to entirely 
" shape" them is not given to mortals. The following interest- 
ing letters from his friend King give, by reflex, all that can now 
be known concerning his feelings in regard to this disappoint- 
ment :"'^ 

[HON. WM. R. KING TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Paris, January 25, 1846. 
Dear Buchanan : — 

Your friendly letter gave me both pleasure and pain. Pleasure, in the 
renewed assurance of your friendship ; and pain, to perceive that the course 
of the President towards you has not been entirely characterized by that 
delicacy and confidence which is certainly due to your position, and to the 
important services you have rendered to him and the country. Let me 
entreat you, however, to act with great deliberation and prudence. Do not 
suffer yourself to be operated upon by professing, or even by real friends, to act 
hastily. I am not of the opinion that any slight was intended by the Presi- 
dent. He no doubt gave the true reason for having nominated Judge 

without consulting you, as he knew you were opposed to his selection.! It is 
not, I think, of sufficient importance to produce a quarrel ; and the President 
must be too well aware of the strength you give to his administration to 
desire your withdrawal. Your doing so at this most important juncture 
would be to give the staff into the hands of your enemies ; who would desire 
nothing better to prostrate you with. Your able correspondence with Paken- 
ham has justly turned the eyes of the country towards you as a talented and 
safe helmsman to guide the ship of State. This your enemies know and feel. 
Do not, I again entreat you, by your own act, aid them to defeat your future 
prospects. Probably I have dwelt more on this matter than it merits ; if so, 
I feel assured you will attribute it to the true motive, my anxiety to see you 
elevated to a station you are so well qualified to fill, with honor to yourself 
and advantage to the country. . . . 

* William E. King of Alabama. He was a Senator in Congress from that State for a 
period of nearly twenty-five years, from 1819 to 1844. He resigned his seat in the Senate and 
accepted the mission to France, to which he was appointed in April, 1844, by President 
Tyler. He was an accomplished statesman of broad and liberal views. A strong friendship 
had existed between him and Mr. Buchanan, from the time when the latter entered the Sen- 
ate. Mr. King was at first under the impression that Mr. Buchanan had declined the judge- 
ship, and on the 1st of January he wrote to express his gratification that the matter had 
taken this turn. But in fact the appointment was never otfered. 

t This does not refer to Mr. Justice Grier, who became the successor of Judge Baldwin. 



564 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[king to BUCHANAN.] 

Paris, February 28, 1846. 
My Dear Friend : — 

I read your kind letter attentively, and then committed it to the flames, as 
you requested. The refusal of the President to place you on the Bench of the 
Supreme Court, after you had manifested a willingness to accept of the situa- 
tion, surprises me greatly. I had supposed, independent of a desire to gratify 
you, to whom he owes so much, he would have seized with avidity on the 
opportunity thus afforded him to get freed from the importunities of persons 
of doubtful qualification, none of whom could venture to complain of your 
being preferred to him. I have turned it over and over in my mind, to see 
if I could discover any motive for his refusal other than that assigned by him- 
self, viz., that you were too important to his administration in the post you 
now occupy to enable him to dispense with your services. If this was in 
truth his sole reason, he should have frankly and unreservedly placed before 
you the difficulties and embarrassments your abandonment of the State 
Department would involve him in ; how necessary you were to enable him to 
carry on the Government successfully, and at the same time have expressed 
his willingness to meet your wishes if persisted in. If such had been his 
course, I know you too well to doubt for a moment but that you would have 
relinquished the judgeship, and continued your invaluable services as a mem- 
ber of the administration. This, however, you must still do ; you owe it to 
the country ; you owe it to yourself. You can form no idea of the reputation 
you have acquired, even in Europe, by the able and masterly manner in which 
you have presented our claim to Oregon, never before perfectly understood, 
either in Europe or America. You certainly occupy at this moment, in public 
estimation, a more enviable position than any other distinguished man of our 
country, and your prospects for the future are brighter than those of any one 
I know. Do not, I beg you, mar those prospects by abandoning your place 
at this critical period of our foreign relations. Finish the work you have so 
ably begun. Settle the Oregon question by an equitable compromise, and 
whatever a few hot heads or selfish aspirants may say, your reputation will 
rest upon a foundation broad and strong, the approval of a virtuous and 
intelligent people at home, and the wise and good of every land. You know 
I am no flatterer. I speak in all sincerity, and say nothing but what is strictly 
true. 

[king to BUCHANAN.] 

Paris, March 28th, 1846. 

Dear Buchanan: — 

The last steamer brought me your very acceptable letter of the 26th Feb- 
ruary. The publication of my correspondence with M. Guizot has been well 
received by all parties in Paris, and has put at rest forever all speculation as 
to the correctness of my despatch. Even M. Guizot himself manifests a 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 5G5 

greater degree of cordiality than formerly, and made it a point to attend a 
ball I gave on the 22d February, although he is not in the habit of going to 
parties. I knew the course I pursued would, so far from committing me with 
any one here, produce a salutary result ; and it was not taken in passion, ol 
because I am "thin skinned." My position was never better than at this 
time with all in power here, from the king down to the lowest official. Pre- 
sent me kindly to my friend, Mr. Trist, and tender him my thanks for the 
interest he has manifested for me. The postponement of the election of 
Senator for Alabama will, as you say, enable me to enter the field with a fair 
prospect of success, and I am free to declare that I should be truly gratified 
to be reinstated in the Senate. It is possible, however, that the Governor 
may be operated upon by those on the spot, who aspire to the situation, and 
dread my return, to call the legislature together this spring, and before I can 
possibly be present. This my friends Bagby and others should prevent. A 
called session would involve unnecessary expense, without an adequate advan- 
tage, or, in fact, any advantage whatever, so far as the pubhc is concerned. 
My arrangements are such that I cannot, with convenience, return to the 
United States before the last of July. I am anxious, however, to conform 
to the wishes of the President in the appointment of my successor, and 
will either hasten or retard my surrender of my place, as to him may seem 
best. Should he prefer to delay the appointment of my successor until after 
the adjournment of Congress, I could return on leave of absence, as he once 
kindly permitted me to do, and leave my Secretary, Mr. Martin, as charge 
des affaires. He is, as you know, well qualified to discharge the duties, and on 
his account I should be pleased to give to him the advantages of the position. 
You will confer with the President and let me know what course will be 
most acceptable to him, and I will then make my request accordingly. If a 
vacancy occurs at Turin by the resignation of Wicklifi", could you not lend a 
helping hand to Dr. Martin ? The place will not, I presume, be sought for by 
any of the prominent politicians, and Martin's information and experience 
peculiarly fits him to be useful. He is, withal, very poor; and even if my 
successor consented to retain him here, his condition would be greatly altered 
for the worse, as with me he lives without expense. Serve him if you can ; 

at any rate, save us from that miserable toady . 

I altogether approve of the President's refusal to submit the Oregon ques- 
tion to arbitration, as proposed by the British government. The objections 
enumerated by you are all sufficient, but, in addition, it could not escape your 
observation that, by the terms of submission, whether referred to a crowned 
head or to private individuals, the result would, in all probability, have been 
to deprive us of all the country north of the Columbia, simply upon the 
ground that actual possession should not be disturbed. Information on which 
I can rely convinces me that Lord Aberdeen, when he directed the offer to 
be made, did not expect it to be accepted. His object was, first, to induce 
the European governments to believe that they were anxious to settle the 
question upon just terms, and, secondly, to gain time, as they calculated on 



566 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Sir Eobert Peel's measure inducing the American people to force their Gov- 
ernment to give w^ay on the Oregon question that they may receive the ad- 
vantages it holds out to them.* I know the calculation is altogether errone- 
ous, and that, as you say, the people are ahead of the Government on the 
question. Still, such is the impression made in England by Pakenham's des- 
patches, the speeches of some of our prominent men, and the tone of our 
opposition press generally, I have my doubts whether Pakenham is as yet 
instructed to make a proposition for a compromise, but it will be made ; and 
will, I think, be such as Ave should not hesitate to accept, unless the perpetual 
navigation of the Columbia is insisted upon. This I would not grant without 
an equivalent in the navigation of the St. Lawrence ; but there seems to be 
a propriety in allowing the use of the river for a term of years, not to exceed 
ten, to enable the Northwest Fur Company gradually to withdraw an interest 
which has grown up under the treaty of joint occupancy. The President 
will certainly act with prudence by submitting the proposition, whatever it 
may be (unless altogether inadmissible), to the Senate, for the advice in ad- 
vance of that body. Cass, Allen and Company will find that no political cap- 
ital can be made by arraying themselves against an arrangement which makes 
the 49th parallel the boundary, but yielding the whole of Vancouver's Island, 
and the use for a few years of the Columbia River. The good sense of the 
whole country will approve of such a settlement. I am not at all surprised 
to hear that Calhoun is anxious to free himself from the odium of voting 
against the notice, regardless of the dilemma in which he has involved his 
devoted adherents in the House. If the Senate amends the House resolu- 
tions, my life upon it, they will receive Calhoun's vote ; and all chivalry will 
exclaim : Behold the great statesman, whose wise and prudent course has 
alone saved the nation from the horrors of war. The speech of Colonel Ben- 
ton was excellent, and proves him to be a statesman indeed. Still, I do not, 
I am sorry to say, approve of his opposition to an increase of our navy. If 
we hope to command the respect of the powers of Europe, we must put our- 
selves in a position not only to repel all aggression, but, if needs be, to act on 
the offensive. They are all jealous of our rapid growth and prosperity, and 
would, if they dared, unite to retard or destroy it. We should hasten to re- 
pair our forts, build some new ones, and add to our little navy ten or twelve 
war steamers. 

Such preparation, although it involves expense, would in all probability save 
us millions, as it would effectually put down all attempts to wrest the Island 
of Cuba from Spain, or to establish a monarchy in Mexico. I highly approve of 
the views taken by Bancroft ; he promises to make an able and efficient Sec- 
retary of the Navy, and I hope he will retain his place and give up, if he has 

thought of it, all idea of a foreign mission. is here on his 

return home ; he is no doubt an amiable man, but weak beyond description. 
Such a representative at such a court was calculated to do us a positive injury; 



* This refers to the measure for free trade in com. 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 567 

we require to have there one of our ablest men. Berlin is of much less 
importance ; in truth, to keep a minister there is scarcely worth the expense. 
Donalson is a good appointment ; I wish it had been for St. Petersburg. I 
am fully aware that diplomatic situations are in great demand, and that the 
President is worried with applications from second and even third-rate men 
for the most important stations. I trust, however, tliat no commonplace men 
may be sent to London, Paris or St. Petersburg. My residence abroad has 
convinced me that the respect in which our country is held very much 
depends on the character and standing of its representative ; and I greatly 
doubt the policy of making removals when the incumbent possesses talent 
and information, and from a long residence has acquired facilities for obtaining 
useful information which a new man, whatever his ability, it may be will 
require years to obtain. This I know runs counter to your theory of rotation 
in office; which may be correct as respects office at home, but should not I 
think, apply to those held abroad. I once gave you my opinion of Wheaton. 
I see no reason to change that opinion. He is peculiarly well qualified to 
represent his country with advantage. Could he not be sent to St. Peters- 
burg? He has grown old in diplomacy without growing rich, and at his 
period of life will find it exceedingly difficult to engage in any pursuit, other 
than that he has so long followed, with a prospect of securing to his family a 
decent support. I should feel truly gratified if you would bring him to the 
attention of tlie President. I am much gratified to learn that harmony pre- 
vails in the Cabinet ; a break up would do much mischief. Retain your place 
regardless of all minor annoyances. The country requires your services to 
bring to a successful termination the important and delicate question of 
Oregon. You have the confidence of all parties ; and I heartily believe that 
in the present state of things the President could not find a man capable of 
supplying your place. Stay where you are, settle the Oregon question, and 
great shall be your reward. Tender my respects to my friends Sturgeon and 
General Cameron, also to Walker, Mason and Benton. 

Your friend sincerely, 

William R. King. 
P-S. — Present me most respectfully to the President and his accomplished 
lady. W. R. K. 

[king to BUCHANAN.] 

Paris, April 30, 1846. 
Dear Buchanan : — 

I thank you for your long and friendly letter. Engrossed as your time 
must be by cares of State, official duties and social intercourse, I feel flattered 
in having engaged so much of your attention. On the 16th of this month 
Paris was thrown into a state of great excitement by an attempt made to 
assassinate the king at Fontainebleau, where he had been spending a few days 
with his family. Two shots were actually fired into the char <l banc (an open 
carriage), in which he was returning from a hunting party, in company with 
the queen, Madame Adelaide, and several other members of the royal family. 



568 i^IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Fortunately, no one received the slightest injury. The ladies were terribly 
frio-htened, but the king showed his usual coolness and disregard of danger. 
The wretched assassin was instantly seized by the attendants. He turned out 
to be a former employe of the government, who, having lost his place, had 
brooded over the injustice he conceived had been done him until he deter- 
mined to kill the king to revenge himself. Lecomt, for that is the name of the 
miserable man, has been subjected to several examinations, but nothing has 
transpired to connect him in any manner with any of the political parties of 
the country. Although the Journal des Dehats, the semi-official paper, 
whatever disclosures Mr. Guizot may make, has, and as I tliink, most impru- 
dently, contended that it was political. Be that as it may, it has certainly 
callotl forth the better feelings of the French generally in favor of their wise, 
prudent and pacific old monarch, which will add strength to his government 
and give permanency to his dynasty. I hastened on his return to Paris to 
tender him my congratulations on his extraordinary and most providential 
escape ; for Lecomt is said to be one of the best shots in France. The old 
man bears a charmed life. Would it not be well for the President to address 
him with his o\vn hand a letter of congratulation at his fortunate escape from 
the hands of the base assassin ? It would, I know, be well received, and in 
tlie present state of our relations with England, we should treat France with 
marked courtesy. Trifles in themselves are of great importance here. I am 
somewhat surprised at Lord Aberdeen's course on the Oregon question, espe- 
cially as he has openly expressed a desire to settle it on amicable terms. That 
arbitration would be rejected, he must have known when he instructed Paken- 
ham to make the proposition ; and it strikes me that the motive for making it 
was to gain time, pass their free trade measures, and avail themselves of the 
effects it would have in the United States, to obtain more favorable terms 
than had been offered by us— or should negotiation fail and war ensue, they 
would be able to prejudice the European governments against us by showing 
that they had tendered arbitration, which was rejected. I must think, how- 
ever, that as soon as the resolutions, to give the notice to put an end to the 
existing treaty, shall have passed the Senate, a proposition for a compromise will 
be made; but whether it will be such as ought to be accepted by us, is^more 
than doubtful. My information leads me to believe it will not be. Still it 
will open the door for negotiation, and however extravagant, should not be 
promptly rejected, but with proposed modifications. If Pakenham has com- 
mon sense, he must long before this have well understood that a proposition 
to fix the line at 49° to the Straits; the whole of Vancouver's Island; part of 
Puget Sound; the navigation of the Columbia; with indemnity to the North 
West Fur Company, would never be acceded to by .us, be the consequences 
what they may. Should such an extravagant offer be made, be assured Mr. 
P. will have a wide margin given him for modifications ; and in the end he 
wiU settle down on Vancouver's Island and the navigation of the Columbia 
for a term of years. You already know ray opinions on this subject, and 
further I would not go, war or no war. Be not surprised, if the conducting 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 569 

of this negotiation falls into the hands of the Whigs, unless speedily settled. 
I do not think many months will pass over before Lord John Russell will be 
at the head of affairs in England, and Lord Palmerston in the Foreign Office. 
Now I am not of the number who believe that the return of the Whigs to 
power will throw additional obstacles in the way of the adjustment of our 
difficulties, and I trust, should the change take place, we shall have no alarm 
speeches from those Senators who recently expressed such heart- felt pleasure 
that Lord John had failed to form a ministry. When shall Ave learn prudence 
in our national councils? You are, I am sorry to see, dissatisfied with your 
position ; and I am no less wearied with mine. Most sincerely do I wish 
that we had both remained in the Senate. You, however, have much to 
reconcile you to the change ; having acquired increased reputation by your 
able correspondence with Pakenham ; nor must you on any account abandon 
your post, until that affair is finally settled. The war spirit of Cass, Allen, etc., 
must not deter the President from making, if practicable, a fair compromise. 
In such a course he will be sustained by the good sense of the country. 
When I wrote you to consult the President relative to my return home, it 
was simply because I was desirous to subject him to no inconvenience in the 
selection of my successor. The state of my private affairs renders it impera- 
tive that I should be at home in September. I can remain here until the first of 
that month, but not longer ; and I wish you so to inform the President. Any 
mode he chooses to adopt to enable me to execute my purposes, will be per- 
fectly satisfiictory, and my object in writing thus early, is to know what course 
will be adopted, that I may make my arrangements accordingly. 1 shall not 
fail to procure a breast-pin, or ring, or something of the kind, and present it 
Mrs. Walsh in your name. It should have been done before this, but I have 
been suffering from lumbago, which has confined me to the house. I am 
now, however, nearly well. Poor McLane has for many weeks been suffering 
severely from some affection He is still in the hands of his physi- 
cian, but much better. He stands deservedly high in England, with both 
Whig and Tory. Lord Landsdown, who will be the president of the council, 
if the Whigs get into power, was in Paris a few days past, and spoke to me 
of McLane in the most exalted terms. Catlin has, I understand, applied to 
Congress, to purchase his Indian gallery. It should not be lost to our country, 
as it will be if Congress refuses the purchase, for he has offers from England, 
which he is only prevented from accepting by his anxious desire that his own 
country should possess it. It is richly worth what he asks for it, and you 
would be doing a service to a most estimable man if you would take the 
trouble to enlist some of your friends in favor of the purchase. As Grund 
gives up the consulate at Antwerp, why not appoint Vesey ? He is honest 
and capable, and withal a good and true American in all his principles. 
Mrs. Ellis thanks you for your kind remembrance of her. Present my 
kindest regards to the Bentons, Bagbys, Pleasontons and Beans. 

Your friend sincerely, 

William R. King. 



570 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

p, g, — Say to my friend, Col. Benton, that exalted as was my opinion of 
his statesmanlike quaUdes, his courage on the Oregon question has raised 
him still higher in my estimation. Eichly does he deserve his well earned 
popularity. But for my stiff fingers, which almost disable me from holding 
my pen, I would write to him and express more fully the respect and regard 
I entertain for him. I wish you would call his attention to Cathn's proposi- 
tion to dispose of his gallery of Indian portraits and curiosities. I do not 
think it should be lost to our country. 

W. R. K 

[kixg to buchaxan.] 

Paris, July 15th, 1S45. 
Dear Buchanan : — 

I have this moment received your letter of the 23d June, brought out by 
the Great "Western. I have at once availed myself of your suggestion, and 
asked officially for my recall. I hope to embark for the United States on the 
15th of September, or, at farthest, by the first of October. I am most anx- 
ious to see you, and, as far as I have any influence, to prevail on you to 
abandon all idea of the judgeship, and to continue in your present position, 
where you have rendered such important services to our country, and justly 
elevated yourself in the estimation of all whose good opinion is worth having. 

_^s for , envy and vanity are his controlling passions, his praise or his 

censure are alike worthless, and you should treat them with contempt. You 
speak of three sections of the Democratic party in the Senate, headed by 
Cass, Benton and Calhoun. Cass may have a small party composed almost 
exclusively of the old followers of Benton ; but I am at a loss to understand 
who they are who now constitute the late Colonel's party. It seems to me, 
able general as I admit he is, that all his men have deserted, and unless he 
can enlist recruits from the Whig ranks, he must be his own standard-bearer. 
Calhoun's followers are beginning to look over the left shoulder, and even his 
fidus Achates, t). H. Lewis, will very soon turn his back on him. Calhoun is 
politically dead. The Oregon question and the Mexican war have already 
proved fatal to many distinguished leaders, Democrat and Whig, so that you 
will find the field open for the Presidency, unless you place yourself on the 
shelf by accepting of the judgeship. I am much pleased to learn that the 
best possible relations exist between you and the President. Use your influ- 
ence to prevent him from selecting improper persons to fill the missions to 
London, Paris and St Petersburg. They are most important positions, and 
should be filled by the first men of our country, and not by mere seekers of 
office, or by those who erroneously suppose that they can enrich themselves 
by the outfit and salary. I speak from my own experience Avhen I say that 
no American minister can live even respectably in Paris for less than fifteen 
thousand dollars a year. Congress should look to this, and give such compen- 
sation as will enable the country to avail itself of the services of the best 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 571 

qualified, who are but too often destitute of private fortune. Mrs. Ellis still 
continues to be your ^yarm advocate for the Presidency. She requests me 
to present her best respects. Mr. Martin is much pleased with diplomacy, 
but has great apprehension lest he should not find his position as Secretary 
altogether as desirable with my successor ; and he is looking forward with 
hope to an appointment as charge des affaires, either at Turin, or some other 
place. Could you not aid him ? He is, as you know, exceedingly poor, and 
not very provident, and an increase of salary would be important to him. 
Present my best respects to my friends, the Pleasontons, Taylors, and old 
associates in the Senate. 

Faithfully your friend, 

William R. King. 

[king to BUCHANAN.] 

Liverpool, Oct. 1, 1847. 
Dear Buchanan : — 

On the 15th of September, I presented my letters of recall, and took leave 
of his Majesty, the King of the French. He was pleased to express great 
regret at parting with me, and a hope that nothing had occurred during my 
residence at his court which had given me dissatisfaction. I assured him 
such was not the case, and that I should ever cherish towards him and his 
amiable family the kindest feelings for the uniform courtesy and cordiality he 
and they had manifested towards me. He abounded in professions of friend- 
ship for myself personally, and for my country ; but Louis Philippe is full of 
duplicity, and professions cost him but little. I left Paris on the 16th, and 
hastened to Liverpool to embark on board the splendid iron steamer, the 
Great Britain. On the 22d we took our departure. The day was fine, the 
wind fair, and we proceeded on our voyage at the rate of twelve miles an 
hour. The passengers, 180 persons, were all in high spirits, and flattered 
themselves with a short and agreeable voyage. Most lamentably were our 
hopes blasted. In an evil hour the captain determined to take the dangerous 
northern passage. Why, it would be difficult to tell, as the wind was equally 
fair for the southern. Night came on dark and gloomy. The breeze fresh- 
ened, almost approaching to a gale ; still he kept on his way at the same rapid 
rate, although he now acknowledges that he had mistaken his reckoning and 
was, in fact, ignorant of his situation. A little before eleven the ship struck 
on the ledge of rocks which surround Dundee Bay, north of Ireland. The 
shock was indeed terrific, and the ladies, many of whom had retired for the 
night, rushed from their rooms, frantic with alarm. Among them was Mrs. 
Ellis. Believing that the ship must go to pieces in a few minutes, I frankly 
told her her danger. To my astonishment, she became calm and composed, 
and during the whole trying scene displayed extraordinary composure. To 
our extraordinary speed we probably, under Providence, owe our escape from 
a watery grave. The good ship cleared the reefs and imbedded herself in the 



572 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

sand, where as the tide was receding, she sunk deeper and deeper, main^ 
taining an upriglit position. Our hope now was that her great strength would 
enable her to resist the waves, which thundered against her side and dashed 
over her lofty decks, until the dawn of day ; for should she break up in the 
darkness of the night, on a rocky shore, with a heavy sea, all were convinced 
that few, if any, could be saved. Long indeed appeared that terrible night, 
but day at length dawned, and the tide being out, we found we were but a 
short distance from the dry land. The boats were lowered. I placed Mrs. 
Ellis in the first that left the ship, and saw her make the shore in safety. My 
nephew and myself followed as soon as all the ladies were landed, and joined 
her in a miserable cabin where she had taken refuge from the rain. No lives 
were lost. I procured a conveyance for Down Patrick, where we rested for 
the night. The next day we arrived at Belfast and took the steamer for 
Liverpool. Being unable to procure a passage in any of the steamships 
which leave in this month, I shall sail to-morrow in the packet ship New 
York, with the prospect of a passage of at least thirty days, but I trust it will 
be a safe one. 

Your friend sincerely, 

William R. King. 

[hOK. RICn.VRD RUSH TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Sydenham, near Philadelphia, December 16, lS-i5. 
My Dear Sir: — 

... I have this morning been turning once more to your note of the 30th 
of August on the Oregon question, in answer to the British minister's of the 29th 
of July. I had, to be sure, read it on its first appearance with the greatest 
attention ; and it would be unjust to withhold longer from you my poor 
tribute to its value. Its demonstration of our title is so full, as to leave 
nothing further to be said ; so clear that our whole country can now fortu- 
nately understand it; and it is in a spirit so fair, and in a tone of patriotism 
so high and just, that every American has solid ground to feel proud of it. I 
rejoice that the country has found so powerful an exponent of her rights as is 
recorded in this most able state paper ; and, as one of her sons formerly 
striving to defend those rights abroad, gladly award to you both my tribute 
<,and my share of the public thanks, for this comprehensive, final and 
'triumphant vindication of them which your pen has accomplished. 

Perhaps, in propriety and prudence, I, ought here to stop. I know how 
rash it generally is, in those not behind the curtain, to be venturing opinions 
before those who are ; yet while writing I cannot avoid adding my belief, 
founded upon as much only as is known to the public, that war is at hand. I 
rest on the courageous spirit of Britain, which we must not undervalue, as it 
is the root of our own : and from a belief in the stability of her resources — 
more than is entertained by all of our friends. These are no reasons why 
we should fear her, but only for being on the look out ; and we shall all, 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 573 

when the extremity comes, owe you, my dear sir, a heavy debt for making our 
rio-ht so manifest in the eyes of this great nation. But Britain, I believe, has 
a firm conviction (such are the different eyes with which nations look) that 
she has rights in that country ; and, by my estimate, she will not, as things 
stand, yield them north of the Columbia, but appeal to the sword, and very 
soon — unless an arbitration, or a mediation should arrest the appeal. 

I pray you to excuse these presumptuous forebodings, in which I truly 
hope I may be wrong, but in the faith of which I am at present deeply 
imbued; and to believe me to be, with the most unfeigned and friendly 
respect Yours most faithfully, 

EicHARD Rush. 

[rush to BUCHANAN.] 

Sydenham, near Philadelphia, August 26, 1846. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I hardly know how to thank you sufficiently for your obliging favor of the 
22d instant and the documents you have so kindly sent me respecting the 
Oregon negotiation. All have arrived safely, as well those by Mr. Sword as 
the separate one from you by mail; and now I have in hand everything I 
could wish. 

My attention was specially directed to the protocol of the 24th of Septem- 
ber, 1844, recording the break-up between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Pakenham, 
and I can understand the hopeless prospect it seemed to leave to the new 
administration. When I used to brood over that protocol last winter, and 
recall what passed in Mr. Gallatin's negotiation in '26 and in mine of '24, and 
weighed the long inflexibility with which England had adhered to the Colum- 
bia as her basis ; and remembered also, as I freshly could and did, the solem- 
uity—I have no doubt sincerity too at that time— with which Huskisson used 
to tell me that he and their whole cabinet thought even that line a great con- 
cession to us, I did not see how war was to be avoided after the President's 
bold and brilliant message when Congress opened. One of the Paris papers, 
the Constitutionnel, speaking of the settlement of the dispute, said that the 
English journals pretended that England had given to the United States a 
lesson of wisdom and moderation ; but they might add, said the same paper, 
that " the Government of the United States, on its part, has given to all 
powers in relation with England a lesson of firmness." This is the truth. I 
again own, that I did not think England would have yielded as much as she 
has ; and although it appears from Mr. McLane's communications that terms 
something better might have been finally obtained, but for the Senate, history 
will be justified in pronouncing the President's course under the complications 
of the occasion (Mexico and everything else) wise and advantageous for the 
country, and one to draw a just fame to himself and the administration. Eng- 
land had got very near to her fighting point, and the settlement marks a great 
epoch in our annals— one not unlike, under some parallels that might be 
drawn, the war of 1812 in its acceleration of our national character. 



574 ^IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

The last article in the last Edinburgh Review, headed "Colonial Protec- 
tion," is an argument for us touching the West India trade with England, its 
principle covering full reciprocity as to our shipping as well as traffic, though 
the Reviewers do not utter the former word ; and now that the Whigs are 
in, it may be hoped that they will think so, and that Sir Robert Peel will co- 
operate with them, as on the sugar question. Sir Robert having done so 
much already, might now set about pushing Lord John Russell into farther 
liberality I What a curious spectacle this would present in the British par- 
hament; yet things more remarkable have been happening there lately, and 
much more so than if they were at length to admit our tobacco almost duty 
free. 

I am gratefully sensible to the friendly invitation you give me to your 
hospitable roof while going on with the investigation I spoke of, though am 
now through your kindness supplied with sufficient materials. Whether I 
shall venture upon another volume or not, I am quite undetermined. Some- 
times I feel half inclined ; then again the other scale kicks the beam. The 
latter is the case whenever I think of Hannah More's comment upon Pope, 
who when quoting the line from liim which says the greatest art in writing is 
" to blot" says there is a greater — " the art to stop." 

If I live as long as my mother, who was out here this week at 86, in good 
health, I shall have time to make up my mind. Excuse this flight, as well as 
so long a letter, and pray believe in the friendly and perfect respect and es- 
teem with which I am, my dear sir, 

Sincerely yours, 

Richard Rush. 

Mr. McLane, at his own request, was recalled from London 
after tlie settlement of the Oregon question, and Mr. Bancroft, 
who had been Secretary of the Navy, in October, 1846, became 
Mr. McLane's successor. The following private letters may 
fitly close the present chapter : 

[sir. BtJCHANAX TO HON. GEO. BANCROFT.] 

Washington, October 6, 1846. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I cannot suffer you to depart from the country without saying from the 
heart, God bless you ! May your mission be prosperous, and Mrs. Bancroft 
and yourself happy 1 I sorely regret that we have lost your services in the 
Navy Department, and still more that we have lost your society ; and this I 
do, without any disparagement to your successor, whom I highly esteem. My 
feelings, both in regard to Mrs. Bancroft and yourself, are warmly entertained 
by Mrs. Polk, with whom I have recently held a conversation on the subject. 

The two most important objects of your mission will be to have the duties 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 575 

on tobacco diminished, and to obtain a relaxation of the present arrangement 
re^-ulating our trade with the British West Indies and American provinces. 
Free trade is now the order of the day, and I am not without hope that these 
objects may be accomplished. I have omitted to instruct you on the former 
subject on your own suggestion, I desire that you should enjoy all the credit 
of the movement. I think a despatch embracing all the statistical and other 
information on the subject, with your own views, might do both the country 
and yourself much good.* In regard to the latter subject, I have not had 
sufficient time to give it a thorough investigation. 

There is still much sickness in Washington, though not of a dangerous 
character. The centre of the city, F Street and the avenue, is comparatively 
healthy. Both Marcy and Mason have had intermittents, — they were, how- 
ever, at the cabinet to-day. Miss Annie t appears to be entirely well, and is 
again as gay as a lark. Miss Clem.t is still very weak, and has not yet lefb 
her chamber, unless she has done so to-day. 

With my kindest regards for Mrs. Bancroft, I remain, as ever, sincerely 
and respectfully, Your friend, 

James Bdcuanan. 



[bakcroft to nrcnAKAN.] 

October 8, 1846. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan : — 

My heart sunk within me as I read your letter containing new evidences 
of your friendship and regard ; because it made me feel more sensibly how 
much I lose in parting from immediate co-operation with you. Your hint 
about tobacco I shall adopt, and will make it my special business to oollect 
all the details. On the other subject also, which is of less immediate necessity, 
I propose to enter upon its consideration fully, first, however, submitting to 
you the paper which I may prepare. You must always deal with me frankly, 
giving me advice as freely as you would to a younger brother. You may be 
sure of my acting with caution ; and I shall always aim to carry out your 
views in the manner that I think will be most satisfactory to you. I shall 
hope to hear from you very often privately, as well as officially. 

Your parcels came yesterday safely to me, about an hour after I wrote to 
you. 

Mrs. Bancroft joins me in expression of the most cordial regard. 

Ever most truly yours, 

George Bancroft. 



* Mr. Bancroft informs nic that he gnhsequcntly advised Mr. Buchanan not to open a 
negotiation for a reduction of the British taxes on tobacco, knowing that it would be a use- 
less effort to endeavor to persuade England to change that part of her financial system. 

t The niece of Mrs. Madison. t Miss Clementina Pleasonton. 



576 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[BANCROFT TO BUCHANAN.] 

LONDON, November 3, 1846. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan : — 

I must add a line to you if it be but to remind you personally of me. To- 
ni"-lit I shall see a good deal of Lord Palmerston. The tone in England is, 
towards us, one of respect. Public opinion is in favor of letting us alone, and 
people are beginning to say that it would be a blessing to the world if the 
United States would assume the tutelage of Mexico. This country is neither 
in the disposition, nor in the ability, to interrupt its friendly relations Avith us. 
The good understanding between the British cabinet and the French is quite 
broken up, and they use in the newspapers and in private very harsh language 
towards each other. But by the next steamer I shall know more. 

The paper at Springfield, Mass., which I named to you for the publication 
of the laws was the " Hampden Post" the old Democratic newspaper with 
which I fought many a hard battle against the worst sort of malignant 
"Whigs. 

" Give my love to Mr. Buchanan," says Mrs. Bancroft. So give my love 
to Clementina and Annie, say I, and wish them all happiness and abundant 
health. I Avish them good husbands and you a good wife. 

Ever faithfully yours, 

G. Bancroft. 

[from MR. CALHOUN.] 

Fort Hill, August 30, 1845. 
Mt Dear Sir : — 

I enclose a letter to , the minister appointed by the Dominican 

Republic to our Government, which I will thank you to have forwarded to 
his address. 

He informs me that Mr. Hogan's report will shortly be made. I hope if it 
should be favorable, the administration will not fail to recognize the indepen- 
dence of the republic, as soon as it can be done according to what has been 
usual in such cases. St. Domingo is, perhaps, the most fertile and best of all 
the West India Islands. It was lost to civilization and commerce through the 
insane movements of France during her revolution. Should the Dominican 
Republic sustain itself, it opens a prospect of restoring the island again to the 
domains of commerce and civilization. It may one day or another be one of 
the great marts for our products. It can sustain a population of many millions. 
It belongs to us to take the lead in its recognition. 

I have good reason to believe that our recognition would be acceptable to 
both France and Spain 

I regret to learn that the prospect is so discouraging in reference to the set- 
tlement of the Oregon question by the parties. I regard it as very important 
that it should be settled. If it should not be, there is great danger of its lead- 



NOTE ON THE OREGON QUESTION. 577 

ing to a rupture between the two countries, which would be equally disas- 
trous to both. It is beyond the power of man to trace the consequences of 
a war between us and England on the subject of Oregon, All that is certain 
is, that she can take it and hold it against us, as long as she has the supremacy 
on the ocean, and retains her Eastern dominions. The rest is left in mystery. 
As to my going again into the Senate, I do not contemplate to return ever 
again to public life. I am entirely content with the portion of the public 
honors which have fallen to my share, and expect to spend the rest of my 
days in retirement, in my quiet retreat near the foot of the mountains. I find 
ample and agreeable occupation both of mind and body. 

With great respect, yours truly, 

J. C. Caluoun. 

NOTE OX THE OEEGON QUESTION. 

Mr. Ju«tiii McCarthy, in his "Eif^tory of our own Times," passes very lightly over the 
Oregon controversy, leavinj? his readers to infer that the only element of danger was the 
popularity which any President would have gained by forcing England into a war. Nearly 
the whole of his "history" of this question is condensed into the following sentences: 
" The joint occupancy was renewed for an indefinite time ; but in 1843 the President of the 
United States somewhat peremptorily called for a final settlement of the boundary. The 
question was eagerly taken up by excitable politicians in the American House of Represen- 
tatives. For more than two years the Oregon question became a party cry in America. 
With a large proportion of the American public, including, of course, nearly all citizens 
of Irish birth or extraction, any President would have been popular beyond measure who 
had forced a war on England. Calmer and wiser counsels prevailed, however, on both sides. 
Lord Aberdeen, our foreign secretary, was especially moderate and conciliatory. He ofifered 
a compromise which was at last accepted." 

A true understanding of any past controversy between England and the United States is 
of importance in the future, not only that justice may be done to individual statesmen, but 
that the methods by which war has been averted and mutual respect and good feeling have 
been preserved, may have a salutary influence in all time to come. This is the chief value 
of the history of such international controversies. The truth is, that in this Oregon matter 
there were undoubtedly popular tendencies in this country, which, if they had been yielded 
to, might have enabled any President to force a war upon England, if he had been disposed 
to have one. But it is not true that there was anything precipitate or peremptory in the call 
for a final settlement of the boundary, or that the American Government v.as disposed at any 
time to go further in compliance with the popular demand than it was bound to go, by a 
proper regard for the rights of the country and the interests of the settlers in the national 
domain, who looked to it for protection. Moreover there was at one time quite as great a , 
probability that a war on this question of Oregon would find backers in England, as there 
was that it would be popular in America. There were interests and passions in both coun- 
tries that had strong tendencies to provoke a war ; and the war would have occurred at a 
time when, to repeat the words of Mr. Webster, it " would have kindled flames that would 
have burned over the whole globe." 

When the President's message of December, 1S45, communicating to Congress the cor- 
respondence down to that period reached England, the British press became excessively 
violent and even abusive. Worse things could not have been said of any goverament or 
people than were said of the American nation and their rulers ; and it is just as true, histori- 
cally, that a war would have been popular in England, as it was that it would have been pop- 
ular in America. In the House of Commons there were by no means wanting strong proofs 
of an unnecessary excitement. 

In estimating the causes which produced the real peril of a war, it would not be just to 
overlook the loose, not to say careless, manner, in which the negotiation was at first con- 
ducted bv and through the British minister in Washington. His rejection of Jlr. Buchanan's 

I— 37 



578 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

offer of the 49th parallel, without a reference to his owu government, made in terms that 
were not well considered— that were in fact scarcely respectful— put it out of the power of 
the President to do anything -but to reassert the American claim, and to leave the British 
government to renew the negotiation by other steps, or to take the consequences of a ter- 
mination of the joint occupancy. It is not to be questioned that Lord Aberdeen's subsequent 
course became moderate and conciliatory. But in the earlier stages of this business, Sir 
Kobcrt Peel's ministry had on hand a most serious domestic question. To borrow the pithy 
words of Mr. McCarthy himself, used in reference to that question : " Peel came into office in 
1841 to maintain the corn laws, and in 1843 he repealed them." It was in fact with Peel one 
long struggle between his former connections and the new opinions forced upon him by the 
circumstances in which he was placed ; and although, in dealing with the relations between 
England and this country, in the earlier part of his miuistry, there were manifested great 
care, prudence, and conciliation, it is quite certain that in the later controversy about 
Oregon, which had not been settled "oy the treaty of 1842, the British foreign office did not 
act at first with the same attentive circumspection, and was not represented at Washington 
with anytliing like the same ability and wisdom, as it was in the time of Lord Ashburton's 
special mission. And how was it that public opinion and official persons in England were 
brought to a sense of the peril in which both nations stood in 1845-6 ? So far as salutary 
influences could be exerted on this side of the Atlantic and be felt in either country, great 
merit is due to two of our statesmen, Mr. Buchnnan and Mr. Webster ; the one having the 
duty of conducting the negotiation to a peaceful issue ; the other the duty of watching it, 
and of using all his influence at home and abroad to produce caution, moderation, and a just 
sense of the responsibility that would rest upon those in either country who should unneces- 
sarily lead the two nations into a war. 

To Mr. Buchanan the praise is due, that he conducted the negotiation throughout with 
skill and firmness, with entire good temper, and without any wish to gain for the President 
or himself the cheap popularity that might have followed their propitiation of the war 
spirit among their countrymen. Mr. Webster's admonitions, uttered with his accustomed 
solemnity, both on the popular platform and in the Senate, were addressed alike to both 
governments and both nations ; but they were chiefly designed to affect opinion and feeling 
in England, and this design was, in a considerable degree, accomplished. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

1845— 1848. 

ORIGIN OP THE WAR WITH MEXICO — EFFORTS OF MR. POLk's 
ADMINISTRATION TO PREVENT IT. 

THE administration of President Polk inherited tlie Texas 
question from the preceding administration of President 
Tyler. The mode in which it was finally proposed to bring 
the republic of Texas into the American Union has been already 
described. When Mr. Polk became President of the United 
States, Texas had been for nine years practically an independent 
power, with a form of government modelled on that of the 
United States, with the exception of the fact that Texas con- 
sisted of a sinHe State. The emigration which had flowed into 
it from the south-western region of the United States had made 
it a slavehokhng countiy. From the time when its independ- 
ence was acknowledged by the American Government, the 
question whether it should remain a separate nation, or be 
absorbed into the American Union, became a very serious one. 
The leading men who had gone thither, had made the revolu- 
tion which claimed to have expelled, and had practically expelled, 
the Mexican power ; and together with the great bulk of the 
inhabitants, they looked upon the United States as their mother 
country. There were great difficulties attending either of the 
two courses that remained open for the American Govermnent. 
On the one hand, if Texas should be left as a separate nation- 
ality, to continue her war with Mexico, which still lingered 
after the battle of San Jacinto, that war was quite certain to 
end in efforts of the Texans to invade and conquer Mexico. 
This would have been resisted by England, and with her aid 
Mexico would in turn have invaded Texas. The power of 
England once introduced into Mexico, she would in all proba- 
bility have shared the fate of India. On the other hand, the 



580 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

introduction of Texas into the American Union was proposed 
at a time when the " Abolitionists" of the North had long been 
pressing forward the immediate and unconditional abolition of 
slavery everywhere, by what they regarded as " moral means," 
without any consideration for the feelings or apprehensions of 
the Southern people. To make a large addition to the area of 
slavery by the annexation of Texas, a slaveholding State, was 
reirarded in the South as a necessary means of streno-theniner 
the political power of that section against the control of the 
General Government, which, it was feared, might eventually be 
obtained by a sectional combination of the Northern States on 
questions relating to the whole subject of slavery. It was a 
hazardous mode of meeting the dangers arising from the North- 
ern anti-slavery agitation, because it placed the people of the 
South in the attitude of seeking a preponderance of political 
power uj)on a sectional issue, at a time when the people of the 
North were not seeking to obtain such a sectional preponder- 
ance, and when there was only an apprehension that they might 
do so. But at the time when President Polk succeeded to the 
management of this delicate matter, it was believed by him and 
by many of his most considerate Southern supporters, that the 
repose of both North and South could be. and required to be, 
secured by an arrangement with the executive government of 
Texas, before her admission into the Union, fixing the northern 
boundary of slavery at the Missouri compromise line of 30° 30' 
north latitude, by extending that line westward. North of that, 
line and west of Missouri, it was believed that negro labor could 
not be valuable, and that the negro could not encounter the 
climate. These were the views entertained by Mr. Buchanan 
when he accepted the position of Secretary of State ; and he 
had reason to know that they were the views of Mr. Polk 
before his election. To Mr. Buchanan the Missouri com- 
promise line recommended itself as a practicable mode of giving 
eifect to the principle of equality among the States in regard to 
the common territories of the United States. 

The precise attitude of the Texas negotiation, and the rela- 
tions of the United States with Mexico, at the time when Mr. 
Buchanan took charge of the State Department, must now be 
stated, together with some reference to the previous history of 



ORIGIN OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 581 

the project of annexation. The first formal overture of annexa- 
tion came from the government of Texas, in the time of Presi- 
dent Yan Bnren, after the independence of Texas had been 
recognized by the United States. Mr. Yan Buren dechned the 
proposal, because he considered it inexpedient to open the 
constitutional questions involved, and because of our friendly 
relations with Mexico under existing treaties of amity and com- 
merce. The secret treaty of annexation negotiated by Mr. 
Upshur under President Tyler was rejected by the Senate. 
Mr. Calhoun's plan for bringing Texas into the Union as a 
State, through the action of Congress, was arranged by him 
with the government of Texas, after he became Secretary of 
State in March, 1814, and in the following December this plan 
and the correspondence with the executive government of 
Texas were submitted to Congress by President Tyler at the 
opening of the session. The motive was fully disclosed. It 
was plainly made known that the American executive believed 
that the British government was about to interpose to cause the 
people of Texas to abolish slavery in their country. This it 
was considered would leave the Southwestern States of this 
Union on what Mr. Calhoun described as the " exposed 
frontier" of a free state, into which their slaves w^ould be 
induced to escape, and from which the foreign and the Amer- 
ican abolitionists would be able to operate upon slavery in the 
domains of those States.* 

The objections urged against this measure, when the resolu- 
tions for accomplishing it were fiinally adopted, three days before 
Mr. Polk became President, were the great extent of territory 
which it would add to our dominions, the increase of slavery and 



* It should in justice be stated that, after it was known to Mr. Webster in the winter of 
1843-44, that a project was on foot for bringing in Texas by treaty, he, not being at that time 
in any public position, made great efforts to arouse a popular opposition to it in New Eng- 
land, but without any success. It was not until after the executive Government had become 
committed to the government and people of Texas to promote the annexation by Mr. Cal- 
houn's plan of legislative action, and after this plan had been submitted to Congress, that 
there began to be any considerable opposition to it in the North, coming from organized 
popular meetings. During the Presidential election of 1844, although the Democratic party 
made the annexation of Texas one of the measures to be expected from it in case of the 
cleotion of its candidate, the Wliig party, in consequence of the attitude of their candidate, 
Mr. Clay, on this subject, was not in a position to oppose the annexation on account of the 
slavery existing in that country. (Compare the detailed account of the annexation of Texas 
in the Life of Mr. Webster, at the passages referred to in the Index, verb. " Texas.") 



582 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

slave representation, and its tendency to produce a war with 
Mexico. It could not be said, however, that under the circum- 
stances Mexico would have a clearly just cause for war if the 
annexation should be accomplished, whatever she might have 
had at an earlier period. Texas was now actually independent 
of Mexico. The United States had not only recognized her 
independence, but had made treaties and carried on commerce 
with her, in entire disregard of the claim of Mexico to the 
sovereignty of this revolted province. And Mexico had during 
all this period made no attempt at reconquest. She had prac- 
tically acquiesced in the recognition of Texan independence by 
the United States and other powers ; and therefore it could not 
be said, after such a lapse of time, that a new and just cause for 
war would arise if Texas should be annexed to the American 
Union.* There was undoubtedly much danger that Mexico 
would not regard the annexation in this light ; and, therefore, 
what the new Secretary of State had to do was to conduct the 
whole matter, under the resolutions of Congress, so as to pre- 
serve peace, if possible. 

His first official duty was to answer a protest addressed to the 
Government of the United States by General Almonte, the 
Mexican minister at Washington. Mr. Buchanan's answer was 
regarded by Mr. Webster as " mild and conciliatory." It was, 
in substance, that Mexico had no right to complain of such a 
transaction between independent states ; that the Government 
of the United States would respect all the just rights of Mexico, 
and hoped to bring all pending questions with her to a fair and 
friendly settlement; but that the annexation of Texas must 

* This was not only the view entertained by President Polk and his political party, but 
it was the deliberate opinion of Mr. Webster, who may be said to have represented all the 
grounds of opposition to the measure. He re-entered the Senate on the 5th of March, 1845. 
four days after the passage of the joint resolutions for the annexation of Texas. On the 11th 
he wrote a letter to his eon, in which he expressed with precision the whole of his objec- 
tions to this measure, and decidedly maintained that Mexico could now have no just cause 
for war, if the measure should be accomplished. He exonerated Mr. Polk and his cabinet 
from any desire to provoke a war with Mexico, and in regard to foreign intervention he 
said : "Nor do I believe that the principal nations of Europe, or any of them, will instigate 
Mexico to war. The policy of England is undoubtedly pacific. She cannot want Texas 
herself; and though her desire would be to see that country independent, yet it is not a 
point she would seek to carry by disturbing the peace of the world. But she will, doubtless, 
now take care that Mexico shall not cede California, or any part thereof, to us. Yon know 
my opinion to have been, and now is, that the port of San Francisco would be twenty times 
as valuable to us as all Texas." (See the entire letter, Life of Mr. Webster, II., 249.) 



ORIGIN OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 583 

now be considered as a thing done. Still, a period of sixty or 
seventy days must elapse before it could be known how the 
government of Texas had taken the passage of the joint resolu- 
tions. At that time, there were instalments of money due 
from Mexico to the United States, under an existing treaty, to 
meet claims of citizens of the United States to a laro-e amount. 
These Mexico might choose to withhold ; perhaps she might 
decree non-intercourse with the United States ; but that she 
would go to war was not regarded as probable by the best 
informed persons at Washington. In the meantime, Mr. 
Buchanan had not only to manage the relations between the 
United States and Mexico, under circumstances of great deli- 
cacy, with firmness, as well as conciliation, but also to keep a 
watchful eye upon the course of England and France in refer- 
ence to this measure. It must be remembered that Mr. Bu- 
chanan had succeeded, as Secretary of State, to the manage- 
ment of the Oregon question with England, as well as to the 
completion of the arrangements for annexing Texas to the 
United States. lie was informed, both privately and officially, 
by the ministers of the United States at London and Paris, of 
the danger of an intervention by England and France in the 
affairs of Mexico ; and soon after he became Secretary of State, 
he had some reason to apprehend that the settlement of the 
Oregon difficulty might be delayed for the purpose of keeping 
open the unsettled questions in regard to the final disposal of 
Texas. Mexico was at this time about to undergo one of its 
many revolutions, and it might become difficult to find an ex- 
ecutive government with which to establish diplomatic relations. 
In this posture of affairs, an interference by either France or 
England, or both, might render it impracticable to carry out the, 
annexation of Texas to the United States, and might lead to 
very serious complications. Writing from London on the 3d of 
March, at the moment when the resolutions providing for the 
annexation of Texas had just passed, but before they could have 
become known in London, Mr. McLane said, in a private letter 
to Mr. Buchanan : 

" Allow me to add a word in regard to Mexico. I stated in an early des- 
patch that the policy here would be to keep open our difficulties there, to 



584 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

await the issue of the Oregon question ; and of that I have very little doubt. 
But why not disappoint such calculation ? Even if oui- affairs with Great 
Britain are to end in a rupture, that result, with proper precaution, may be 
postponed until the expiration of the year's notice. Then why not act 

promptly and decisively in regard to Mexico ? Every day is 

leading to machinations in Europe to interfere with the settlement of the 
Mexican government." 

On the 25tli of March (1SJ:5,) Mr. Buchanan sent the follow- 
ing official despatch to Mr. King, the Minister of the United 
States at Paris : 



[BUCHANAN TO KING.] 

J 



Department of State, 
Washington, March 25, 1' 
Sir: — 

Your Despatch, No. 11, under date of the 27th ultimo, has been received 
and submitted to the President. In commencing his administration, he had 
confidently hoped, that the government of France was animated by the same 
kind spirit towards the United States which inspires the Government and 
people of this country in all their conduct towards their ancient Revolutionary 
ally. This agreeable impression was made upon his mind by the emphatic 
declaration of his Majesty to yourself on the 4th July last, when speaking on 
the subject of the annexation of Texas to our Union, " that in any event no 
steps would be taken by his government, in the slightest degree hostile or 
which would give to the United States just cause of complaint." The Presi- 
dent was also gratified with the subsequent assurance of M. Guizot, given to 
yourself, that France had not acted and would not act in concert with Great 
Britain for the purpose of preventing annexation, but that in any course she 
might pursue she would proceed independently of that power. You may 
then judge of the surprise and regret of the President, when he discovered from 
your last despatch, that the governments of France and Great Britain were 
now acting in concert and endeavoring by a joint effort to dissuade the gov- 
ernment and people of Texas from giving their consent to annexation. Nay, 
more, that so intimate has been their alhance to accomplish this purpose, that 
even " the instructions of the French government to its representative in 
Texas had been communicated to Lord Aberdeen." 

The people of Texas are sovereign and independent. Under Providence 
they hold their destiny in their own hands. Justice to them requires that 
they should have been left free to decide the question of annexation for 
themselves without foreign interference and without being biassed by foreign 
influence. Not a doubt exists but that the people of the two Republics are 
anxious to form a re-union. Indeed, the enthusiastic unanimity which has 
been displayed by the citizens of Texas in favor of annexation is unexampled 



ORIGIN OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 



585 



in the history of nations. Little reason then had we to anticipate that whilst 
the two Republics were proceeding to adjust the terms for accoraplishing this 
re-union that France in concert with Great Britain, and under the lead of that 
power, should interpose her efforts and influence to paralyze and obstruct the 
free action of the people of Texas, and thus place herself in an unfriendly 
attitude towards the United States. 

The President leaves it to your sound discretion to decide whether you 
ought not to embrace a favorable opportunity to communicate, formally or 
informally, to the government of France, the painful disappointment which he 
has experienced from a review of these circumstances. 

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, 

James Buchanan. 

At the time wlien this despatch was written, the British and 
French agents in Texas, in conjunction with certain of the 
principal officials of that country, were making efforts to pro- 
duce dissatisfaction with the terms of annexation proposed hy 
the American Government. The people of Texas M-ere by a 
very large proportion in favor of the annexation. The terms 
offered by the United States could be made the means of pre 
venting it. AVriting privately to Mr. Buchanan, on the 25th 
of April, Mr. King said : 

There is scarcely any sacrifice which England would not make 

to prevent Texas from coming into our possession. France is acting in con- 
cert with her, so far as influence goes, but will stop there. She will make no 
pecuniary sacrifices. I have weighed well the contents of your last despatch, 
and as you give me full discretion in the matter, I have come to the conclu- 
sion that in the present threatening state of our relations with England, no 
good purpose could be effected by convicting M. Guizot of the gross duplicity 
of which he has been guilty ; and especially as it is to be hoped that the ques- 
tion of annexation has before this been definitely settled. The notice taken 
of the President's inaugural on the Oregon question in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment has roused up a war spirit in that country which pervades all classes, 
and caused the detention of the steamer which should have left on the 4th, to 
take out despatches to Mr. Pakenham. As the excitement was then at its 
height, it was supposed that their instructions contained an ultimatumwhich 
was to yield nothing beyond the Canning proposition. Should this be the 
determination of that government, negotiation must cease, for to such terms 
we can never accede. I am induced, however, to believe, from conversations 
I have held with Mr. ElUs, now in Paris, who is connected with the ministry, 
being a brother-in-law of Lord Ripon, and himself a privy councillor, that 
Mr. Pakenham's instructions will be of a conciliatory character ; and that they 
have great hopes of being able to settle the matter upon fair and liberal terms. 



586 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAJf. 

But of this you are probably much better informed than he is. I am still of 
the opinion that we should not hesitate to divide the Territory [Oregon] by 
fixing our northern boundary at latitude 49°. To settle the question, I would 
yield something more and take the southern shore of the Strait of Fuca, and 
thus give to England the whole of Vancouver's Island. Such a variation of 
the proposition, which was rejected by Mr. Canning, would afford Sir Robert 
Peel ground to stand on, and might facihtate an arrangement. I fully under- 
stand the difficult position you occupy as regards this question, looking to 
the generally received opinion that our title to the whole of the Territory is 
unquestionable. 

As Mr. King, under tlie discretion given to him, did not think 
it best at that moment to make a formal complaint of the con- 
duct of the French government, it became necessary for Mr. 
Buchanan to encounter the intrigues of the British and French 
diplomatic agents in Texas to prevent the government of that 
country from acceding to the proposal of annexation. Satis- 
fied that the people of Texas, with a very near approach to 
unanimity, desired the annexation, Mr. Buchanan, with the 
approbation of the President, instructed the representative of 
the United States in Texas, Major Donaldson, to assure the gov- 
ernment and people of that republic that if they accepted the 
terms of annexation pffered by the joint resolutions of the 
American Congress, they might rely on the United States to 
make fair and equitable arrangements with them on all points 
not covered by those resolutions. He also despatched to Texas 
other trustworthy persons, on whom he could rely, in an unof- 
ficial cliaracter, to watch the movements of the British and 
French agents, and to aid Major Donaldson in counteracting 
them. The Texan Congress was not in session when the resolu- 
tions of our Congress were received there. Whether action 
would be taken upon them Vfiih suflicient promptness to pre- 
vent foreign interference from encouraging Mexico to invade 
Texas, depended upon the willingness of the executive of Texas 
to call that body together before its usual time of assembling. 
That interference would be attempted by the English and 
French agents, the American Government was well assured. 
That England would take the lead in efforts to make the gov- 
ernment and people of Texas prefer independence to annexation 
to the United States, and that France would second these 



ORIGIN OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 587 

efforts, there could be no doubt. Tliere could be as little doubt 
that, whatever might be the motive of either power, there 
could be no solid justification for their interference between the 
United States and a country which had been practically inde- 
pendent of Mexico for nine years. There was no just ground 
on which any European power could assume that the United 
States was dealing unfairly with Mexico ; and it should have 
been remembered that there were then pending questions be- 
tween the United States and Mexico, quite independent of this 
matter of Texas, with which no foreign power could have the 
least right to interfere, and which the Government of the 
United States might find it necessary to settle along with the 
questions of Texas. Nevertheless, an intrigue was now set on 
foot in Texas, by the British agent, Captain Elliott, seconded by 
the French agent, M. Saligny, to induce the executive govern- 
ment of Texas to accept the guarantee of England and France 
that Mexico should be made to acknowledge the independence 
of Texas, provided that her annexation to the United States 
should be refused. An offer to make Texas independent was 
actually obtained from the power then ruling in Mexico. That 
this was done with the knowledge and consent of the President 
of Texas is true. He was, as he afterwards said, willing to 
have such an ofter drawn from Mexico, because he believed 
that it would strengthen the cause of annexation and place it 
on higher grounds with the world. The truth is that the exec- 
utive government of Texas and leading persons in that country 
hesitated for some time in regard to the best course to be pur- 
sued. They listened to the representations of Captain Elliott 
and postponed the call for the meeting of their Congress at his 
instigation. Elliott believed that if the Texan authorities 
should delay action, or even if the terms of annexation offered 
by the United States should now be accepted, the consummation 
would be defeated in the next session of the American Con- 
gress, and that in the meantime England and France would 
come forward and guarantee the independence of Texas. He 
made these representations to the President of Texas early in 
May, and he and M. Saligny then left the country, without 
making known whither they were going ; and at about the 
same time it became known that the Texan secretary of state 



588 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

had suddenly departed for Europe. It was believed in Texas 
that Elliott had gone to the United States to confer with some 
of the i)rominent opponents of annexation, and to bring back 
proofs that the whole measure would be finally rejected by the 
Congress and people of the United States. These occurrences 
aroused the people of Texas to such a degree of earnestness 
and determination, that their executive was compelled to call 
the Congress together, for the purpose of summoning a conven- 
tion to ratify the annexation and to form a State constitution. 
The meeting of the Congress was fixed for the IGth of June. 
When this was announced, the 23eople of Texas in general 
regarded the annexation as settled, and they turned their atten- 
tion to the subject of their new constitution.* 

The Texan Congress, when assembled, adopted the basis of 
annexation proposed by the United States, and made provision 
for a convention to be held at Austin on the 4th of July. Cap- 
tain Elliott was then convinced that further opposition would 
be useless. He was reported to have said : '• The hunt is up. I 
retire and await orders from Her Majesty." The annexation 
was ratified by the convention in the month of July. 

There were of course no United States troops in Texas at the 
time of this action of its convention ; but after this event it was 
thought best to place a small force there, and this force was to 
arrive in the early part of July. But before the convention had 
assembled, namely, in the last week in June, Mexican troops 
were put in motion towards the Rio Del Norte. A new election 
of a President was to take place in Mexico before the close of 
the year. Whoever might aspire to that position would find 
his chief means of success in stimulating the war feeling of the 
nation. In the latter part of July, Mr. Buchanan had left 
Washington for a short absence in Pennsylvania. lie was 

* Mr. C. A. Wickliffe, who was sent by Mr. Buchanan to Texas as a confidential agent, 
and from whose report I have taken the principal facts above related, writing from Galveston 
on the 6th of May, said: "The subject of the terms of annexation, or the result of the 
measure when Congress meets, no longer constitutes the topic of conversation among the 
people. They speak of this as a subject settled. The all -engrossing topic among them is 
the provisions of their constitution to be adopted. Upon this subject I have been gratified 
to listen to the views and opinions of many intelligent men. The deep interest they feel in 
the work of making a constitution which shall secure to Texas and her citizens the blessings 
of a good government and social order, gives high hopes of their future destiny. I undertake 
to predict that you will be surprised when you shall see their constitution, emanating from 
a people of whose disorder so much has been said." 



ORIGIN OP THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 589 

recalled by tlie following letter from tlie President, inclosing 
one from Mr. Bancroft, the Secretary of the Isavy : 

[president polk to MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington Citj, August 7, 1S45, 
My Dear Sir : — 

I enclose to you a letter from Mr. Bancroft, and will add to what he has 
said, that the information from Mexico comes in so authentic a shape as to 
entitle it to entire credit. The strong probability is that a Mexican army of 
eight or ten thousand men are now on the western borders of Texas. Should 
they cross the Del Norte, as no doubt they will, our forces at present in the 
country will be inadequate to resist them in their march upon Texas. Orders 
will be issued to-day to increase our forces as far as our disposable troops 
will enable us to do so. The necessary despatches from your department to 
Major Donaldson, or (in the event that he has left the country), to the United 
States Consul at Galveston, will of course be prepared by Mr. Mason. I wish 
it were so, that while these important steps were being taken, we could have 
the benefit of your advice. 

Before you left you requested me to inform you, if anything should occur 
which in my judgment would make it necessary for you to return earlier than 
you intended. We are in daily expectation of receiving further information 
from Mexico, which may, and probably will, confirm the statement given you 
by Mr. Bancroft. The news of the action of the convention of Texas was 
despatched from New Orleans to Vera Cruz by the Mexican Consul on the 
15th ult., and would probably be conveyed to the city of Mexico by the 
21st or 23d. Upon receiving this information, some decisive action no doubt 
took place. 

In addition to these reasons, which make it very desirable to have the 
benefit of your counsel, I must confess that the developments which are taking 
place, as well as my daily reflections, make it, in my opinion, more and more 
important that we should progress without delay in the Oregon negotiation. 
You may consider me impatient on this subject. I do not consider that I am 
so, but still I have a great desire, that what is contemplated should be done as 
soon as it may suit your convenience. I have felt great reluctance in saying 
this much, because I desired not to interfere with your aiTangements during 
the short recreation Avhich you have taken from your arduous labors. 
I am, very faithfully and truly, your friend, 

James K. Polk. 

P. S. — If you determine to anticipate the period of your return to Washing- 
ton, you will see the propriety of leaving Bedford in a way to produce no 
public sensation as to the cause of your departure. That it may not be known 
that you leave on receiving a letter from me, I will not place my frank on this 
letter. Yours, &c., 

J. K. P. 



590 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 



[mR. BANCROFT TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Washington, August 7, 1845. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan: — 

You remember I told you, before you left, that Baron Gerolt* predicted 
war on the part of Mexico. Yesterday morning, at the President's request, 
I went to see him, and found him very ready to communicate all his intelli- 
gence, concealing only the name of his informant, and desiring that his own 
name may not be used. 

His letters came by way of Havana, and Charleston, S. C, and are from 
Mexico city, of the date of June 28th. He vouches for the entire authen- 
ticity and good opportunities of information on the part of his correspondent. 

General Arista, with three thousand men, chiefly cavalry, himself the best 
cavalry officer in Mexico, had been directed to move forward towards the Del 
Norte ; but whether he had orders to cross the Del Norte was not said. 

At San Louis Potosi, General Paredes, the commander-in-chief, had his 
general quarters, with an army of seven thousand men. These also were 
directed to move forward, in small divisions, towards the Del Norte. 

From Mexico City, General Felisola, the old woman who was with Santa 
Anna in Texas, was soon to leave with three thousand men to join the army 
of Paredes. 

Thus far positive information. It was stated by the baron as his opinion 
that Mexico would certainly consider the armistice with Texas broken by the 
action of the Texas convention ; that she would shun battles and carry on an 
annoying guerilla warfare ; that she would protract the war into a very ex- 
pensive length ; that she would agree to no settlement of boundary with us, 
but under the guarantee of European powers. 

On these opinions I make no comment. The seemingly authentic news 
of hostile intentions has led Governor Marcy,t under proper sanctions, to in- 
crease his little army in Texas, and Mr. Mason has written all the necessary 
letters. I do not see but that the sun rises this morning much as usual. The 
President, too, is in excellent spirits, and will grow fat in your absence, he 
sleeps so well noiu, and sees nothing before him but the plain, though steep 
and arduous path of duty. 

So wishing you well. 

Your faithful friend, 

George Bancroft. 

Mr. Buchanan had already determined wliat com-se to advise 
the President to pursue in regard to Mexico. This was to re- 
estahlish diplomatic relations with her, by sending a minister 
with special instructions and authority to negotiate a settlement 

* Prussian Minister. t Secretary of War. 



EFFORTS TO PREVENT WAR WITH MEXICO. 591 

of all questions between the two countries, including the west- 
ern boundary of Texas. To select a suitable person for this 
mission and send him into Mexico with an uncertainty of his 
being received, or of his being received and treated with, was a 
delicate matter. The appointment had to be made, and to be 
kept a profound secret, until it could be known what reception 
the minister would meet with. It was settled early in the 
autumn that this appointment should be oiFered to Mr. John 
Slidell of Louisiana. His acceptance of the position was made 
known to the President in September. The following private 
letter to Mr. Buchanan is somewhat amusing in its earnest- 
ness respecting the secrecy which had been enjoined upon the 
writer :* 

[mR. slidell to MR. BUCHANAN.] 

New Orleans, Sept. 25, 1845. 
My Dear Sir : — 

You can scarcely imagine how much I was surprised to-day by receiving 
your most kind and friendly letter of the 17 th inst. 

I have never at any time believed that we should have war with Mexico. 
I have looked upon the rhodomontades of the press and the manifestoes of 
secretaries, as alike having but one object in view, the presidential contest ; 
and in this point of view I consider it of little consequence who shall be 
elected. He who had been most strenuous in proclaiming war as indispens- 
able to the vindication of Mexican honor, would, when installed in the presi- 
dential chair, " roar you an 'twere any nightingale." The truth is that 

although I have no very exalted idea of yet I cannot imagine that 

any one who could possibly be elected president, could have so small a modi- 
cum of sense as to think seriously of going to war with the United States. 
But strong as I have been in this belief, I had not thought that the govern- 
ment would have been prepared so soon to receive from us an accredited 
agent. I think with you that they desire to settle amicably all the questions 
in dispute between us. But will they dare in the present distracted state of 
the country, to give so great a shock to what is their settled public opinion. 
They have stimulated popular prejudice to a degree that it may, under any 
appearance of disposition to treat with us, be fatal to the new administration. 
But of this you have infinitely the best means of judging, and I shall hold 
myself in readiness to receive your instructions. I feel most deeply the 



* John Slidell of New Orleans, at this time a Representative in Congress from Louisiana, 
was the same person who became famous all over the world, along with his colleague, Mr. 
Mason, during our civil war, after they were seized from on board the British steam-packet 
Trent, on their way as Confederate envoys to England, brought to the United States, im- 
prisoned, and afterwards released. Consult the Index, verb. " Slidell." 



592 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

importance of the mission, and I confess, now that it is probable I shall soon 
enter upon it, I have some misgivings about it. I hope that you will not 
consider this as an affectation of modesty and humility. I assure you I am 
perfectly sincere, but will probably grow in better favor with myself Avhen 
the work is fairly commenced. I am truly grateful to you for the proof of 
your friendship and esteem, and am flattered by the confidence reposed in me 
by the President. I shall endeavor to justify them. The President has 
enjoined on me the strictest secrecy ; he even goes so far as to say that I 
should not communicate what he had said to me to a single human being. I 
have told him that I was obliged to make an exception in favor of Mrs. S., 
but as I could not well enter into particulars with him on this subject, pray 
let me explain it to you. If I had made an unreserved pledge to the Presi- 
dent, I could not have felt myself at liberty to hint it even to my wife. I 
could have made no preparations for my voyage without her knowing it. We 
were making our arrangements to proceed shortly to Washington. If I were 
mysterious with her, she would be shrewd enough to guess what was in the 
wind. She would have some theory to guide her, because you may recollect 
that when you first broached this subject with me, I told you that I had no 
secrets for her. Now I am not one of those who believe that a woman 
cannot keep a secret. I know she can, for I am sure that she has never 
breathed a word, respecting it, to any one, not even to her mother. Besides 
she is living in the country, where we seldom see any one, and where there 
is little gossiping. Pray, explain this to the President, who might perhaps 
consider my disobedience of his injunction as an inauspicious onien in the 
opening of my diplomatic career. It is a matter of great regret to me not to 
have the opportunity of full personal communication with you before going to 
Mexico. I feel that it will be a great disadvantage, but I must rely upon 
your alleviating it as far as possible by your communications and instructions. 

I will not fail to convey your very flattering message to Mrs. S. 

I think I must get her to write to you to remove an impression which I faar 
you have taken up. She will tell you that I am one of the best tempered men 
living. I have written in great haste, having barely had time to save the mail. 
Believe me, my dear sir, most truly and respectfully. 

Your friend and servant, 

John Slidell. 

Mr. Slidell was at Pensacola in the middle ot November 
(1845), prepared to embark for Yera Cruz, on his way to the 
City of Mexico. He was somewhat disturbed by a rumor that 
Mr. Buchanan was about to retire from the State Department, 
but this proved to be unfounded. His instructions came from 
Mr. Buchanan, and were received before he reached the capital 
of Mexico, where he arrived in the early part of December. 
At this time there were two unpaid instalments of money which 



EFFORTS TO PREVENT A WAR WITH MEXICO. 593 

became due from Mexico to the United States in April and 
September, 1844, under a convention of April 11th, 1839, and 
a large amount of claims of citizens of the United States against 
Mexico which had arisen subsequent to that convention. Mr. 
Slidell was now authorized to make an offer that the Govern- 
ment of the United States would assume the payment of all 
just claims of citizens of the United States against Mexico 
down to that time, which could be established by proofs accord- 
in »• to the principles of right and justice, the law of nations, 
and the existing treaties between the two countries. He was 
further authorized to include in the new treaty which he was 
to negotiate an adjustment of the western boundary of Texas ; 
to stipulate for the payment by the United States, in cash, of 
an ample equivalent for such a settlement of the boundary as 
the United States desired, and to agree to make the payment on 
the exchange of ratifications. By such a settlement, while the 
United States would secure incalculable advantages, Mr. Bu- 
chanan believed that Mexico would be more than indemnified 
for the surrender of her doubtful right to reconquer Texas, and 
for the establishment of the boundary which the Goverament 
of the United States intended to claim. 

In the latter part of the year (1845), General Paredes pro- 
cured himself to be declared President of Mexico, by a process 
which is described in the following private letter to Mr. Bu- 
chanan, written by Mr. Slidell from the City of Mexico : 

[slidell to BUCHANAN.] 

Mexico, January 10, 184b. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I am sending to Vera Cruz, to be forwarded by the first merchant vessel 
my despatch respecting the instalpients of April and September, 1844. 

The facts are not as completely developed as I could have wished, but it is 

impossible to obtain any further information at present Paredes, 

notwithstanding his solemn protestation that he would accept no place in the 
government, has been elected president by a junta of notables of his own 
choice, and, as you may readily imagine, unanimously. The government is 
now really, although not in form, a military despotism. Many of the states 
have already given m their adhesion, and from present appearances, Paredes is 
likely to establish his authority throughout the republic. He seems to possess 
I.— 38 



594 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

considerable energy, and lie is believed to have pecuniary honesty. He will 
probably maintain himself for some time, if he can arrange the difEculties 
with the United States. Unless he does this, he will soon find himself with- 
out means to pay his troops, for the capitalists will not advance him a dollar 
in the present state of our relations. So soon as he was elected, I applied 
wholly through the consul, to the military commandant, for an escort — the 
cabinet was not appointed for some days after his election. The commandant 
replied that while Paredes was in opposition to the government, he could not 
furnish the escort. On the 7th inst. the Minister of Foreign Relations was 
appointed, when Mr. Black applied in writing for an escort, and received yes- 
terday a reply " that public order not having been yet completely restored, 
the president could not spare the forco necessary for an escort." Now Puebla 
has submitted to the government, and nearly the whole of the army is in the 
capital and on the road to Vera Cruz, this answer looks very much as if the 
government did not wish him to leave the city, and I should not be at all sur- 
prised to receive very soon an intimation of a disposition to receive me. 

General Almonte is Secretary of War, and understood to be the soul of the 
cabinet. The Secretary of State is Mr. Castillo y Zurgas, who was for some 
years charge des affaires at Washington. I met with him at Jalapa, where I 
saw him much, and conversed freely with him during my stay of ten days. 
He is an intelligent and well educated man, and seemed to have the most 
friendly feelings towards the United States, and spoke without reserve of the 
absolute necessity of a friendly settlement of our difficulties. I have not seen 
him since his appointment, and avoid, indeed, all intercourse with people in 
any way connected with public affairs, because I am well satisfied that any 
manifestation of a disposition to approach the new government would only 
tend to procrastination, if not defeat my object. I think that I shall have a 
better chance of succeeding than with the former government, for Paredes has 
the nerve to carry through any arrangement that he may consider expedient, 
and calculated to promote his continuance in power. 

Believe me, my dear sir, foithfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

John Slidell. 

Although at the date of this letter it appeared probable that 
Paredes would receive the general submission of the people of 
Mexico, and that he must be regarded as at least the de facto 
President, it could not be considered that a counter-revolution 
of some kind was not likely to take place. The Mexican Con- 
gress was to assemble on the 1st of January (1846). Before 
Mr. Buchanan had received Mr. Slidell's private letter of 
January 10th, he sent to Mr. Slidell the following official 
despatch : 



EFFORTS TO PREVEXT A WAR WITH MEXICO. 595 

[mH. BUCHANAN TO MR. SLIDELL.] 

Department of State, 

(No. 5.) Wasuisgton, January 20, 1S4G. 

Sir:— 

I have the honor to transmit here-\vith your commission as Envoy Extraor- 
dinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the 
Mexican Republic, under the appointment made by the President, by and 
with the advice and consent of the Senate. 

Your despatches, Nos. 2 and 3, under date respectively, the 30th November 
and 17th December, have been received ; and I shall await the arrival of 
others by the Porpoise with much solicitude. Should the Mexican govern- 
ment, by finally refusing to receive you, consummate the act of folly and bad 
faith of which they have afforded such strong indications, nothing will then 
remain for this Government but to take the redress of the wrongs of its 
citizens into its own hands. 

In the event of such a refusal, the course which you have determined to 
pursue is the proper one. You ought, in your own language, so to conduct 
yourself as to throw the whole odium of the failure of the negotiation upon 
the Mexican government; point out in the most temperate manner the 
inevitable consequences of so unheard of a violation of all the usages which 
govern the intercourse between civilized nations, and declare your intention to 
remain in Mexico until you can receive instructions adapted to the exigencies 
of the case. This sojourn will afford you an honorable opportunity to watch 
the course of events, and avail yourself of any favorable circumstances which, 
in the mean time, may occur. Should a revolution have taken place before 
the first of January, the day appointed for the meeting of Congress, an event 
which you deemed probable ; or should a change of ministry have been 
effected, which you considered almost certain ; this delay will enable you to 
ascertain the views and wishes of the new government or administration. 
The desire of the President is that you should conduct yourself with such 
wisdom and firmness in the crisis, that the voice of the American people shall 
be unanimous in favor of redressing the wrongs of our much injured and long 
suffering claimants. 

It would seem to be the desire of the Mexican government to evade the 
redress of the real injuries of our citizens, by confining the negotiation to the 
adjustment of a pecuniary indemnity for its imaginary rights over Texas. This 
cannot be tolerated. The two subjects must proceed hand in hand. They 
can never be separated. It is evidently with the view of thus limiting the 
negotiation, that the Mexican authorities have been quibbling about the mere 
form of your credentials ; without even asking whether you had instructions 
and full powers to adjust the Texan boundary. The advice of the Council of 
Government seems to have been dictated by the same spirit. They do not 
advise the Mexican government to refuse to receive you ; but, assuming the 
fact that the government had agreed to receive a plenipotentiary to treat upon 



596 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

the subject of Texas alone, they infer that it is not bound to receive an 
envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary without this limitation. 

In the mean time, the President, in anticipation of the final refusal of the 
Mexican government to receive you, has ordered the army 'of Texas to 
advance and take a position on the left bank of the Rio Grande, and has 
directed that a strong fleet shall be immediately assembled in the Gulf of 
Mexico. He will thus be prepared to act with vigor and promptitude the 
moment that Congress shall give him the authority. 

This despatch will not be transmitted to you by the Mississippi. That 
vessel will be detained at Pensacola for the purpose of conveying to you 
instructions with the least possible delay, after we shall have heard from you 
by the Porpoise ; and of bringing you home in case this shall become neces- 
sary. 

By your despatch No. 2, written at Vera Cruz, you ask for an explanation 
of my instructions relative to the claim of Texas on that portion of New 
Mexico east of the Del Norte ; and you state the manner in which you pro- 
pose to treat the subject in the absence of any such explanation. I need say 
nothing in relation to your inquiry ; but merely to state that you have taken 
the proper view of the question, and that the course which you intend to 
pursue meets the approbation of the President. 

I am, &c., 

James Buchanan. 



It is now necessary to recur to tlie military movement 
referred to in this despatch. In August, 1845, General Zachary 
Taylor was encamped at Corpus Christi, in Texas, in command 
of a small American force of fifteen hundred troops. In the 
following JS'ovember, his force was recruited to about four 
thousand men. On the 8th of March, 1846, acting under the 
President's orders, given in anticipation of a refusal of the 
Mexican authorities to receive or to treat with Mr. Slidell, 
Taylor moved towards the Eio Grande, and on the 28th his 
little army reached the banks of that river, opposite the town 
of Matamoras. In a despatch written on the 12th of March to 
Mr. Slidell, Mr. Buchanan said : 

It is not deemed necessary to modify the instructions which you have 
already received, except in a single particular ; and this arises from the late 
revolution effected in the government of the Mexican Republic by General 
Paredes. I am directed by the President to instruct you not to leave that 
republic, until you shall have made a formal demand to be received by the 
new government. The government of Paredes came into existence not by a 
regular constitutional succession, but in consequence of a military revolution 



EFFORTS TO PREVENT A WAR WITH MEXICO. 507 

by which the subsisting constitutional authorities were subverted. It cannot 
be considered as a mere continuation of the government of Herrera. On the 
contrary, the form of government has been entirely changed, as well as all the 
hi^h functionaries at the head of the administration. The two governments 
are certainly not so identical that the refusal of the one to receive you ought 
to be considered conclusive evidence that such would be the determination of 
the other. It would be difficult, on such a presumption, in regard to so feeble 
and distracted a country as Mexico, to satisfy the American people that all had 
been done which ought to have been done to avoid the necessity of resorting 
to hostilities. 

On your return to the United States, energetic measures against Mexico 
would at once be recommended by the President; and these might fail to 
obtain the support of Congress, if it could be asserted that the existing govern- 
ment had not refused to receive our minister. It would not be a sufficient 
answer to such an allegation that the government of Herrera had refused to 
receive you, and that you were therefore justified in leaving the country after 
a short delay, because, in the meantime, the government of Paredes had not 
voluntarily offered to reverse the decision of his predecessor. 

The President believes that, for the purpose of making this demand, you 
ought to return to the City of Mexico, if this be practicable, consistently with 
the national honor. It was prudent for you to leave it during the pendency 
of the late revolution, but this reason no longer continues. Under existing 
circumstances your presence there ought to be productive of the most benefi- 
cial consequences 

The time when you shall ask to be received by the government of Paredes 
is left to your own discretion. The President thinks this ought to be done 
speedily, unless good reasons exist to the contrary. Your demand ought to 
be couched in strong but respectful language. It can no longer be resisted on 
the ridiculous pretence that your appointment has not been confirmed by the 
Senate 

In regard to the time of your departure from the Mexican Republic, the 
President is willing to extend your discretion. In the present distracted condi- 
tion of that republic, it is impossible for those at a distance to decide as correctly 
what ought to be your course, in this particular, as you can for yourself upon 
the spot. The intelligence which you have communicated, " that the depart- 
ment of Sinaloa has declared its independence ; " " that the garrison of Mazatlan 
has pronounced against Paredes ; " and "that the authorities of the depart- 
ments of Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Michoacan, and Queretero 
have protested in strong terms against the usurpation of Paredes ; and refus- 
ing to continue in the exercise of their functions, have dissolved," may well 
exercise an influence on your decision. Indeed, you suppose " that appear- 
ances justify the belief that Paredes will not be able to sustain himself until 
the meeting of the constituent congress; that his government will perish 
from inanition, if from no other cause. In this critical posture of Mexican 
aflfahs, it will be for yourself to decide the question of the time of your 



598 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

departure according to events as they may occur. If, after you shall have 
fulfilled your instructions, you should indulge a reasonable hope, that by con- 
tinuing in Mexico, you could thus best subserve the interests of your country, 
then you ought to remain, provided this can be done with honor. The Pres- 
ident reposes entire confidence in your ijatriotism and discretion, and knows 
that no temporary inconvenience to yourself will prevent you from perform- 
ing your duty. It may be that when prepared to take your departure another 
revolution might be impending, the result of which would enable you, by a 
timely interposition, to accomplish the great objects of your mission. Besides, 
in the present distracted condition of Mexico, it is of importance that we 
should have an able and discreet agent iu that country to watch the progress 
of events, and to communicate information on which this department could 
rely. Jalapa is probably not so favorable a position for observation as the 
City of Mexico. 

We have received information from different quarters, in corroboration of 
your statement, that there may be a design on the part of several European 
powers to establish a monarchy in Mexico. It is supposed that the clergy 
would generally favor such a project, and that a considerable party already 
exists among the people, which would give it their countenance and support. 
It is believed by many that this party will continue to increase in consequence 
of the successive revolutions which may afflict that country, until at length a 
majority of the people will be willing to throw themselves into the arms of a 
monarch for security and protection. Indeed, rumor has already indicated 
the king, in the person of the Spanish Prince Henry, the son of Francisco 
de Paula, the rejected suitor of Queen Isabella. 

These may be, and probably are, idle speculations ; but they come to us in 
such a shape that they ought not to be wholly disregarded. It will be your 
duty to exercise your utmost vigilance in detecting this plot and its ramifica- 
tions, if any such exists 

This despatch will be transmitted to you by the Mississippi (which is placed 
at your disposal), and will be delivered to you by an ofQcer of that vessel. 
There will always be a vessel of war at Vera Cruz, ready to bear your 
despatches or yourself to the United States. 

In conclusion I would remark that it is impossible, at this distance from the 
scene of action, to anticipate all the contingencies which may occur in a 
country in a state of revolution, as Mexico is at present, and to provide for 
cases of sudden emergency. Much must necessarily be left to the discretion 
of the envoy, Avho, on the spot, can take advantage of circumstances as they 
may arise : and the President is happy in believing that you possess all the 
qualifications necessary for the crisis. 

P. S. — To provide for possible contingencies, two letters of credence are 
transmitted to you : the one directed to General Paredes by name, and the 
other to the President of the Mexican Republic. 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 599 

The government of Paredes refused to receive Mr. Slidell, 
and he consequently retired from Mexico to JS'ew Orleans, 
and on tlie 9th of April he wrote thence to Mr. Buchanan the 
following private letter : 

[slidell to BCrCHANAN.] 

New Orleans, April 9, 1846. 
My Dear Sir : — 

When I left here a few months since I little thought, or rather I never 
dreamed, that I should so soon return. Had I found a fair field in Mexico, I 
believe that I would have justified your good opinion and the confidence 
which the President, through your recommendation, reposed in me. But the 
fates have willed it differently, and I return an unsuccessful, and of course 
in the estimation of the public generally, an inefficient diplomatist. I flatter 
myself that such will not be your opinion and that of the discreet few, and I 
must console myself with that reflection. Be that as it may, I shall never 
cease to entertain the warmest recollections of your kindness and friendship. 

I hope to hear from you in a few days ; if you express any desire to see me 
in Washington, I shall leave immediately. I shall probably defer my depart- 
ure until the end of the month. I most sincerely hope that your anticipations 
of embarrassment to the Oregon question from my return will not be realized, 
but if such be the case, the publication by the Mexican government of my 
correspondence rendered the mischief irreparable. 

Mrs. Slidell begs me to present her to your recollection. She will soon 
have an opportunity of thanking you in person for your many kind remem- 
brances. 

Believe me, my dear sir, most faithfully, your friend and servant, 

JoHX Slidell. 

Within a little more than a month after the date of this letter 
a state of war was declared by an act of Congress to exist be- 
tween the United States and Mexico. This peculiar declara- 
tion came about in consequence of events which had occurred 
after Taylor had taken up a position on the Rio Grande oppo- 
site to Matamoras. The Mexican General Arista, commanding 
a large force at Matamoras, menaced Taylor with hostilities, if 
he did not retire to a position beyond the river Neuces. The 
threat was disregarded, and, in a short time, a small reconnoi^ 
tering party of Taylor's troops were attacked by the Mexicans 
and captured. This occurrence, and the refusal of the Paredes 
government to receive Mr. Slidell, were regarded by President 



(500 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Polk as tantamount to actual war. By a special message sent 
to Congress on the lltli of May, 1846, Mr. Polk officially in- 
formed Congress of all the facts which he regarded as estabhsh- 
ing a state of war, and asked for its recognition. On the 12th 
of May the act recognizing the war was passed, and provision 
was made for its vigorous prosecution. The main justification 
relied upon by the administration for the presence of an Ameri- 
can army on the Eio Grande was, that it was encamped upon 
territory which had already become part of the United States, 
and that it was the duty of the United States Government 
to defend this territory from invasion, especially as the only 
existing executive government of Mexico had refused to receive 
an American envoy, through whom an adjustment of all ques- 
tions of boundary and all other pending difficulties could have 
been negotiated. 

[SLIDELL TO BUCHANAN.] 

New York, July 1, 1846. 
My Dear Sir :— 

As I have not heard from you, and have seen no notice in the newspapers 
of the matter which was the subject of our last conversation, I feel happy in 
the behef that your application to Mr. A. has resulted in a satisfactory expla- 
nation. By this time you must have decided the question so important for the 
country, as well as decisive of your future political fortunes, whether you 
will remain in your present post or accept the vacant judgeship. You might 
not think me altogether a disinterested adviser were I to urge you not to leave 
the Department of State ; and indeed I myself feel that a certain degree of 
selfishness may render me a somewhat unsafe counsellor ; but of one thing I 
am sure, unless some absolute necessity exist for an immediate decision, you 
should not take a step which cannot be recalled, and which you may hereafter 
regret, until the tariff question has been definitively acted on. That stumbling 
block out of your way, I should most deeply regret to see yoi^ shelved upon 
the Supreme Bench. 

There may be here and there in this part of the world, some extreme 
54-40 men who disapprove of the settlement of the Oregon question, but I 
have not as yet met with one of them ; and if we acquire California, the 
specimens wiU be equally rare in the Western States ; it will soon be indeed 
an extinct race, and two years hence it will be as difficult to make an issue on 
that question as on the Mexican boundary. 

Our people are essentially practical ; they look ahead only ; no party can 
be organized on matters that are past. The President has made most judi- 
cious promotions in the army and selections for the volunteers, and now that 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. CO] 

he has got rid of this source of uneasiness, he must feel himself in very 
smooth water. We have most shocking weather. So soon as it becomes a 
httle more summer hke, we shall go to Saratoga. Mrs. Slidell begs me to 
present her regards. 

Believe me, very faithfully yours, 

John Slidell. 

War having been declared General Scott demanded of tho 
Government, as his " right," to be appointed to lead our armies 
into Mexico. Whether it was because his " right " was recog- 
nized, or because he was regarded as the fittest general for the 
chief command, his appointment to that position was made, 
notwithstanding the brilliant victories gained by General Taylor 
as soon as the war opened.* The military history of the war 
does not come within the scope of this work. During its pro- 
gress, the American Government kept a diplomatic agent in 
Mexico, Mr. N. P. Trist, ready to agree on terras of peace. The 
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, negotiated between liim and three 
plenipotentaries on the part of the Mexican Republic was signed 
on the 2d of February, 1848, and was ratified by the Senate 
of the United States on the 16th of March. It ceded to the 
United States New Mexico and California, and settled the 
western boundary of Texas. The private letters given below 
are of the years 181-5 and 1846, and with them the present 
chapter must close. 

[slidell to BUCHANAN.] 

New Orleans, November 5, 1846, 
My Dear Sir : — 

I reached home about a fortnight since, and was met by the unpleasant 
intelligence of our overwhelming defeat in Pennsylvania. I have persuaded 
myself that this can only be a temporary reverse, and that Pennsylvania must 
very soon retake her position in the Democratic ranks. I should feel much 
better satisfied, however, to have this opinion confirmed by you. I do not 
know what to think of Santa Anna's movements, letters, etc. It may be that 
he is only mystifying his countrymen, but the more reasonable solution seems 
to me to be that he has not found himself as strong as he expected, and has 
not thought it prudent to declare his real sentiments. I believe that he is 
fully impressed with the necessity of making peace, but whether he will be 

* Colonel Taylor was promoted to the rank of major-general Boon after the first of his 
victories. 



602 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

able to carry out bis views is another question. Wlien I last saw you, the 
course to be pursued, if Mexico refused to treat, had not been decided upon. 
It is time that this question should be decided. The present system of opera- 
tion involves the most enormous expense. That would be a minor considera- 
tion were adequate results produced. I believe that if the Mexican Congress 
refuse to treat, the war may be ended in the course of the next year by the 
capture of the capital. This, if pursued with vigor and under a competent 
commander-in-chief, would be the better course. I doubt if General Taylor 
possesses the capacity for operations on so extended a scale; and yet, until he 
has committed some grave and palpable error, it would be a very unsafe step 
to supersede him. I have seen many persons from the army ; they all think 
Worth the most competent man. Kearney, perhaps, is equal to Worth. I do 
not know enough of Butler to have any fixed opinion as to his capacity. The 
fate of the administration depends on the successful conduct of the war. 

There are but two modes of carrying it on — to march upon the capital with 
such a force as will ensure success, or to hold the northeastern provinces and 
California, with the ports of Vera Cruz and Tampico, keeping up a rigid blockade 
of both coasts, and requiring the enemy to supply all the jarovisions we may 
require. For this purpose Ave should not require more than fifteen thousand 
effective men. If we do not march upon Mexico, it is every way essential to 
take San Juan de Ulloa. The navy should have an opportunity to distinguish 
itself, and the people must have something to huzza about. 

There is a Doctor Mesa here, just arrived from Victoria, the capital of 
Tamaulipas. He brings letters, stating him to be a man of character and influ- 
ence, and that he is authorized to speak the sentiments of the leading men of 
Tamaulipas. He says that the people of that department are willing to separate 
from Mexico, if they can have assurances of protection from us, and that they 
would be joined in the movement by the neighboring departments. I of 
course did not pretend to say what would be done by the administration, but 
suggested that at present it would be indiscreet to guarantee a northern con- 
federation, but that we would be under the strongest obligations of honor, in 
making a treaty of peace, to stipulate for full protection in person and prop- 
erty to all those who might take part in the movement. He will proceed to 
Washington, and I have taken the liberty of giving him a letter of introduc- 
tion to you. I shall patiently await the expiration of the month of December; 
if by that time Mexico has not signified her wish to treat, I shall no longer 
continue to look forward to a renewal of my mission. I have written to the 
President, and I have felt it my duty to say what I have heard from almost 

every quarter, that General (of whose qualifications 1 personally have 

no knoAvledge whatever), does not command the confidence of the army. Do 
you know General Pillow ? Has not the President exaggerated views of 
his military talents ? 

Believe me, my dear sir, very faithfully and respectfully. 

Your friend, etc., 

John Slidell. 



PKIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 603 

[mr. slidell to president polk.] 

New Orleans, January 6, 1847. 
My Dear Sir: — 

The tenor of all the advices from Mexico is such as to satisfy me that [the 
Mexican] Congress will not authorize the opening of negotiations, and that 
we are not to have a peace until its terms are dictated by a victorious army 
before the walls of the capital. The public interest may, and probably will 
require that you should make, under such circumstances, other arrangements 
for future negotiations than those which you had heretofore proposed, and my 
object in now addressing you is to state, as I do with the most entire frank- 
ness, and without the slightest reservation, that I do not expect or desire that 
my previous mission, or any understanding that has existed in regard to its 
resumption, should interfere in the remotest degree with any new selection 
that you may consider it expedient to make. While I shall ever entertain the 
warmest sense of the distinguished and unsolicited mark of your good opin- 
ion in charging me with one of the most important trusts which has ever 
been confided to a citizen of the United States, I feel that I should be 
unworthy of its continuance if I permitted any claims of mine, real or sup- 
posed, to embarrass you for a single moment. 

G-eneral Scott, when he passed through this place, considered himself, in 
consequence of my relation to Mexican affairs, at liberty to communicate in 
confidence to me, as he did fully, his plan of the campaign, and I was highly 
gratified to learn that Vera Cruz was to be attacked by a force that will in- 
sure the possession of that most important position. I am not so well satis- 
fied, however, that the shortest road to Mexico is the best, and while I take 
it for granted that the topography, resources and climate of Mexico have 
been maturely studied, and due weight given to all the considerations 
which should decide the choice of routes, yet I can not but feel some misgiv- 
ing as to the result. At all events, the most abundant resources of men and 
materials should be placed at his disposition. There is one subject connected 
with this, of which I have long been thinking of writing to you, but have 
been restrained by feelings which you can understand and appreciate. I fear 
that the commander of our squadron has not the qualities of energy and de- 
cision which are imperatively required for an emergency hke the present. 
Commodore Conner is a brave man, an accomplished officer, and a good sea- 
man, but his health is, and has been for some time past, so much impaired as, 
in a great degree, to neutralize these qualities; the sound mind, in military 
matters especially, is not sufficient without the strong body; and frequent 
violent attacks of a most painful nervous affliction, the tic-douloureux, cannot 
fail to affect the clearness of his perception and the vigor of his action. To 
my mind this has been abundantly demonstrated by his two abortive attempts 
at Alvarado. On this point there is little difference of opinion among the 
officers under his command. Alvarado might have been taken without diffi- 
culty on either occasion. He does not command the confidence of those who 



G04: LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

serve under him, and confidence is the vital principle of success. I make 
these remarks with great difiidence and stiU greater reluctance, for I have the 
highest regard for Commodore Conner, as an oSicer and a gentleman, and 
were it not for his bodily ailments, there are few men in the navy whom I 
consider better fitted for so important a command. I trust that you will par- 
don me for suggestions which may perhaps be considered misplaced, but I am 
sure that you will do justice to the feeling that has dictated them. Your 
own fame, the success of your administration, the great interests of the 
country are staked upon a brilliant termination of the war, and the feelings of 
an individual are but dust in the balance of such momentous issues. This is 
the scale in which I wish my own to be weighed, and be assured, my dear 
sir, that so far as I am concerned, I shall most cheerfully and cordially 
acquiesce in any decision whicli you may think proper to make. 

Yours ever, 

John Slidell. 

[hON. RICHARD RUSH TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Sydenham, near Philadelphia, October 7, 1846. 
My Dear Sir:— 

I am half ashamed to be again sending you little bits of my correspondence 
from abroad ; but you, who have so much to do with heads of governments 
and nations, will know how to appreciate even general expressions from those 
who live in daily intercourse with sovereigns, and are constantly hearing them 
talk — ^yet whose discretion and training guard them against mentioning 
names. The enclosed letter, received by the last steamer, is from Lady 
Lyttleton, and I naturally am disposed to infer that the words I have pen- 
cilled, mean Queen Victoria; or that they include her — at the least. This Lady 
L. is the widow of the late Lord Lyttleton, and daughter of Earl Spencer, 
and holds the post of chief governess to the queen's children ; for which she 
was selected from among England's highest women for virtues and accomplish- 
ments, to aid in forming their principles and conduct. Her home is chiefly 
Windsor Castle, but she dates now from "Osborne House," the queen's 
marine residence at the Isle of Wight, where she was at the time of writing, 
with the queen and children. The queen is understood to hold her in tlie 
greatest esteem and confidence : and the little pencilled words, dropping from 
such a quarter in this private letter, do seem to me to import that this little 
successor to Queen Elizabeth personally likes your treaty, full as much as 
when Lord Aberdeen writes officially that it is approved; and so may be 
taken as a veritable addition to all the other evidences you have on that head ; 
and this must be my excuse for sending the letter to you — which can be 
returned at your perfect convenience. I need not stop to explain the little 
allusions it has to my family or self, as they are the mere common courtesies 
of an amiable lady. The " niece " in question, is the wife of Colonel Bucknall 
Estcourt, known to you as lately in our country under a commission from the 
British government. 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 605 

This good lady's letter done with, I am tempted to' go on and remark, as 
somewhat growing out of it, that if those who could doubt the President's 
consistency in agreeing to the Oregon treaty, or yours in supporting him in it, 
be not convinced by the articles now in course of publication in the Pennsyl- 
vanian (following up the powerful discussions in the Union on the same point) 
that there was perfect consistency, we may say of them what Hume says of 
the sturdy Scotch Jacobites who declared for the innocence of Mary of 
Scots ; viz, that they are beyond the reach of reason and argument, and must 
be left to their prejudices 

I have just been reading my last Union. The Santa Fe army of the West 
appears to have done, and to be doing, nobly; but war, war, war all over 
Mexico, by land and sea, say I for one. All else is leather and prunella 
just now, and would be inhumanity to ourselves in the end. If a blow 
can be struck at Vera Cruz, so much the better. I7iat would tell through 
the world ; which, otherwise, will say, in spite of the diiFerent circumstances, 
that the French took the castle, whilst we, with all our naval resources so 
much nearer, could not. A thousand of our seamen would do the business. 
Let them land by night, armed to the teeth, during, or at the close of, a 
furious bombardment, we having bomb vessels and heavier ships perhaps 
than now, and they will go right into the works — nothing can stop them — 
carrying all before them as surely as Decatur succeeded at Tripoli, when, 
in the face of all their soldiers, batteries, gun-boats, and the guns of the 
frigate, odds twenty to one more against him than there would be against our 
squadron in the gulf, he and his mere handful of gallant men, so signally 
triumphed. There are Decaturs somewhere in our squadron now, or those 
who have their mantle. Nothing more certain. They would put the gulf in 
a blaze of glory for us, if you let them try it. 

I have been writing a good deal for my httle paper ; ever a sort of privi- 
lege to irresponsibility, joined, if not to entire ignorance, at least to want of full 
knowledge. But I console myself with the reflection that it must be ever a 
sort of relief to a high official man with his hands full of engagements, on 
getting quite through a letter to him, to find at last, as you do with this, that 
it makes no complaints, taxes him with no business, nor even demands any 
answer. 

And now I will conclude with begcing you to accept the assurances of 
esteem and friendship with which I desire, my dear sir, to subscribe myself, 

Very faithfully yours, 

Richard Rush. 

[rush to BUCHANAN.] 
SYDENHAjr, NEAR PniLADELPmA, Juuc 2d, 1846. 

My Dear Sir: — 

A rumor catches my eye in one of the morning papers that General Scott 
has claimed of the administration his right to lead our army into Mexico. 



606 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

This may or may not be true. I am little inclined to believe all I see in the 
newspapers, or the half of it ; but I know what is true, viz : That when Gen- 
eral Brown died, Scott did claim, in the most objectionable manner, his right 
to succeed to the command of the army. He addressed a series of letters to 
the Secretary of War, then Governor Barbour,* to prove, as he confidently 
supposed that he did, his alleged right, all of them written in a highly improper 
tone. One of the members of the cabinet likened them, by a figure of speech, 
as I remember, to taking the Government by the throat, and demanding its 
surrender upon his own terms. Being then of the cabinet myself, invited by 
Mr. Adams from the English mission, where I had been some seven years, (in 
which country, to give the devil his due, I had observed the military to be 
always de facto as well as in theory, wholly subordinate to the civil power, 
above all tlie supreme executive power), I heard all his letters read, and con- 
fess that I was astounded at them. So out of place were they conceived to 
be as addressed to a member of the cabinet, and thus in effect to the Presi- 
dent, that there were those of the body (I am sure there was one) who would 
have been in favor of striking his name from the army without more ado, and 
this in the face of the gallant manner in which he did his duty last war in the 
field, on the mere footing of the spirit of insubordination and dangerous tem- 
per for a military man which these letters bespoke. Iii the end, as you know, 
Macomb was appointed Brown's successor, over both Scott and Gaines, for 
the latter had put in his somewhat imperious claims too, urging it offensively, 
though in a less degree than Scott. I presume that Scott's letters are on file 
in the War Department. The whole history of the affair is curious. It 
would not do for me to write, or for me to make public, but if ever the oppor- 
tunity happens to occur to me in conversation, you might be amused to hear 
some of its details. It came near to breaking Mr. Adams's cabinet to pieces 
at the time. 

Has not the case occurred for the balancing principle we have been threat- 
ened with, and might it not be well to forestall its application? Prevention 
is better than cure. If we promptly get possession of the Mexican capital, 
and make them sign a treaty doing us full justice at last, it would be too late 
for Guizot and company to interfere. They would see too clearly its utter 
hopelessness. " The burying would have gone by," as our Judge Yates was 
fond of saying. It would be the a posteriori argument rather than the a 
liriori. These are crude thoughts, occurring while I write, which, of course, 
you have all been more fully weighing in Washington ; but one more I must 
indulge in, not crude, which is, that really our whole operations in regard to 
Mexico, compared to the ultimatum of the French Minister Deffands, which 
preceded the bombardment of Vera Cruz by Admiral Baudin and the Prince 
de Joinville, quite naturally remind us of Fontaine's fable of the beasts who 
accuse each other of their sins. The hons, the wolves and the bears are par- 
doned everything, while the lamb is devoured for nibbling a little grass, 

* James Barbour of Virginia, Secretary of War under President John Quincy Adams, 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. G07 

I had intended only to mention confidentially those letters of General 
Scott which, if on file, may be seen by all ; but I cannot conclude without 
congratulating the President and yourself on General Taylor's victories as 
equally glorious and pure. They are the former by all the best titles that can 
be laid to efficient and splendid achievements in arras, with greatly inferior 
numbers, and the latter from having been gained on our own soil in repelling 
hostile aggressions, following upon " long continued and unredressed injuries." 
A people who have thus deliberately commenced a war upon this patient and 
long forbearing RepubUc have surely invited its vigorous recoil upon them- 
selves, whatever the consequences to themselves. Such must be the calm 
voice of history, pronouncing her judgment on well authenticated facts when 
party spirit is forgotten. 
, I remain, my dear sir, very sincerely yours, 

Richard Rush. 

[rush to BUCHANAN.] 

Sydenham, near Philadelphia, August 18, 1845. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I have to pray your excuse for the trouble of this letter. 

I wish to have all the documents respecting Oregon that accompanied the 
President's message to the Senate of the 21st of July. They were given in 
the Union, Avhich I take, but so often miss, through one bad chance or other 
at the post office, that I have not these documents ; and as they are generally 
published in the pamphlet form, I would feel greatly indebted to you if (hav- 
ing a copy to spare) you would have the goodness to direct it to me, as I know 
not where else to seek it. Sometimes I am meditating one more volume on 
our relations with England, the Oregon question closing the hst of the histori- 
cal ones growing out of our revolution ; and I desire at any rate to gather up 
the authentic documents bearing on that question which seem to me, with 
the facts they furnish, to supply the materials perhaps of some reflections also, 
at this new and remarkable epoch in our affairs. On the whole, I think you 
made a wise settlement of that long pending difficulty. My own impression 
was ever very strong, that England was ready to appeal to the sword, unless 
( she got territory and advantages south of 49° ; and I will candidly own to 
you that she took up with/ew;er at last than I supposed she would have done. 
This I ascribe to the energy and whole course of our Government since Mr. 
Polk came in, at which I was a little startled at first ; but it came out nobly, 
and what a fine prospect the settlement now offi^rs to us of intercourse with 
England, in connection with our new tariff. 

On this latter head, will not England now do something for our tobacco, 
and become wholly liberal in the arrangements of her West India trade with 
us ? Our new tariff may well justify us in urging her on these and other 
points in which she is still much behind the liberaUty of our own system. 

I am sincerely glad that your services are retained in the Department of 



608 ^IFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

State. If I might claim to speak, I should say that it is due both to your 
country and yourself, that, having accomplished so much of good in that 
station already, you should continue in it to do more. 

How ill-judged, I would almost say criminal, in the Senate, to have refused 
the President the small sum he asked towards the executive plans with Mex- 
ico ! Eeading lately a life of Mirabeau, I was much struck with a remark 
quoted from Madame de Sevigne, that '' there is nothing so expensive as loant 
of money y What may be the executive plans precisely in regard to Mexico, 
I of course know not ; but I can conceive that to have given the President 
those two millions in hand he asked for, might have saved the ultimate expen- 
diture of fifty or a hundred millions. 

I remain, my dear sir, with sincere respect, very faithfully yours, 

ElCHARD EusH. 

[mR. PICKENS TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 

Edgewood (South Carolina), July 5th, 1846. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I owe you a letter ; but, as in your last, you said you were so much over- 
whelmed in business, I thought it would be wrong to inflict a letter upon you 
until you might have more leisure. And as I see you have disposed of the 
Oregon question and its difficulties, I suppose now you must be resting upon 
your triumphs and honors, and have some time to read a humdrum letter from 
a quondam friend, who assures you in advance that he is not going to beg you 
for any office whatever. 

You wrote me you were about to give a letter of introduction to me for an 
English lady who was to travel South, etc. I looked a long time for this 
distinguished visitor, and had my household put in order to receive her, par- 
ticularly as I heard she was about to write a " book," and I desired to figure 
largely in English history. 

By the by, I see it stated by "letter-writers," who now constitute a dis- 
tinguished fraternity illustrious for the intimate knowledge they possess of 
everything, that you are going to England yourself, and I see it also stated in 
the same quarter that you will take with you a very brilliant cousin of mine. 
Now, I will not tell you how I think you will represent us at the court of 
St. James, but I have no hesitation in saying that she will Oo us honor in any 
court in Europe. Is this all true ? Where is King ? Is he going to quit 
Paris ? I hope if he comes home he will bring a French lady — it would suit 
him well. He was a little French before he went, and he must be very much 
so now. Tell him if he does intend to bring out a lady, for God's sake, let it 
be no French or Italian countess. They say you were not satisfied with the 
settlement of the Oregon question, but that you wanted more rocks, and ice, 
and muskrats. I think it all turned out right, and would have been settled 
much earlier if the " notice " had passed at the first of the session. I know 
you are satisfied. I suppose it is about like what they used to say of you in 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 



609 



relation to the tariff, that you wanted thirty-six dollars a ton on iron and pro- 
hibition on coal, etc., and yet I always knew you did not care a fig for the 
tariff, except some of your people were rising about it. I think I can tell 
what you do desire now above all things, and that is the luxurious feeling of 
honest independence enjoyed in the retirement of your beautiful homestead at 
Lancaster. If there is one feeling sweeter to man than any other it is after 
leaving cabinets, and courts, and politicians to breathe once more the pure 
air of one's native hills and valleys. 

What are you going to do with the Mexican war ? I hope there will be 
no treaty without the acquisition of California. The loss of California to Mex- 
ico will be nothing, as it will aid in consolidating her government, and finally 
strengthen it, while its acquisition will be immense to us. In fact we have 
already conquered it, as there is no force between us and the North provinces 
to keep us out of it. 

If we had California with its vast harbors, in the next fifty years we could 
control the commerce of the Pacific, and the wealth of China and India, and 
the future destiny of our glorious Republic would be to accumulate as vast 
wealth and power on the Pacific as we have on the Atlantic. Some people 
seem to have very tender consciences of late as to conquests, etc. I should 
like to know if half the earth is not now owned by the rights of conquests. 

Some time since, when the Mexican war broke out, I wrote the President 
cordially approving of what had been done, etc. ; but I have never heard a 
word. I hope he has no one to select letters for his eye, and to keep others 
from him, as used to be done by others who preceded him. This remark is 
suggested by the fact that I see lately some of his important appointments in 
this quarter have been made from his bitterest and most malignant opponents. 
I say this to you in confidence. 

If you have time I should be glad to hear from you; and tell me who is to 
be the next President ; and who I must pull off my cap to shout for, etc. 

I expect to take my family North this summer, and if so may pass through 
Washington on my way to Saratoga and the lakes. If nothing liappens, I 
may call to see you about the commencement of the dog-days, if you have 
not left Washington before that. I believe I will also go to see Van Buren, 
and console him for the split in the Democratic party of New York, and the 
poHtical death of Wright, etc. I always liked the stoic indifference with, 
which Van Buren took everything, and the easy Avay in which he lolled in an 
armchair. He looked like he would make a good fisherman. The truth is, 
he was a very firm and sagacious man, but made very poor selections for 
office. If he had changed his cabinet, and selected young, talented, and 
ambitious men he never would have been turned out, but he had old men 
about him who loved ease as well as himself. 

I have written you a rambling letter, as I had nothing else to write. If 
you had been a planter, I would have written you about cotton and our crops. 
You know I am engaged entirely on my estates at present, and solely occu- 
pied, thank Grod I in the finest and noblest pursuit, the cultivation of the soil. 
I.— 39 



eiO LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

And I hope, if tliey reduce the tariiF, as they ought to do, if there is any 
honesty at Washington, that I may be able next year to sell my cotton at 
nine cents to some Pennsylvania manufacturer, and get my iron from your 
iron-masters cheap enough to use more ploughs and axes for next crop. 

Very truly your friend, 

F. W. Pickens.* 

The following lively letters were written by an English lady, 
who was a good while in this country, and who soon afterwards 
published a little book called " The Statesmen of America in 
1846 " : 

[from MRS. MAURY.] 

Cincinnati, April 14, 1846. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan: — 

Your letter reached me shortly after my arrival in New Orleans, and at 
once made Mrs. Maury a great lady at the St. Charles. I have been anxiously 
waiting some information from various quarters, which might decide my plans 
for the next few weeks, but as yet I have received none. The Unicorn can 
hardly have sailed at the time we have supposed. I do not wish to remove 
further from the seaports until I shall be assured that my husband and his 
anxious charge do not yet require my presence. I have, of course, no news 
of Dr. Hughes, and therefore have no idea when and where he will wish me 
to meet him. Mr. Clay is still at St, Louis, and his return to Lexington very 
uncertain. I have been suffering from a slight indisposition for the last few 
days, and am not yet ready for travelling. This is a tolerable list of per- 
plexities for a lady. In addition, I cannot avoid feehng great interest and 
some degree of alarm at the scenes which have lately transpired in Con- 
fress.t . . . Winthrop is a gallant advocate, but neither his noble spirit 
nor his truthful nature should be wasted thus. For Mr. Ingersoll, to whom, 
as you know, my personal attachment is very strong, I have felt most keenly; 
his temperature is warm, and his susceptibilities as exquisite and acute as those 
of a woman ; and I, who admire his mind, and enjoy his wit, and love his 
worth, cannot endure to think of the abusive epithets which Mr. Webster has 
heaped upon him. Nevertheless, I always considered his first allusion to the 
affair of McLeod an indiscretion, and felt certain from the first that evil would 
arise from it. I can only attribute his turning back to that period, to the 
historical habits of his mind, which led him to take a new view of affairs 
subsequent to that event, from the information he had received from Governor 
Seward. The Governor is intrepid, and will give the unvarnished truth, 
nothing adding thereto, nor diminishing aught therefrom. I cannot for one 



* Afterwards governor of South Carolina during the first period of secession. 
t This refers to the charges made by Mr. C. J. Ingersoll against Mr. Webster. See the 
Life of Webster, Index, verb. " Ingersoll." 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. Gil 

moment conceive that Ingersoll has been instigated by personal resentment 
because he was in the habit of expressing to me his private opinions of every 
public man in Washington, and I have never heard from his lips one vindictive 
word against Mr. Webster. . . . 

To proceed, however, to a less painful theme. I hke Cincinnati much 
better than New Orleans, feeling myself here once more in America instead 
of in some shabby old town of Brittany, listening to patois French (vulgarly 
called gumho French in New Orleans). This city presents all the interest 
which a growing community ever possesses, and Cincinnati is an infant Her- 
cules, We receive from Judge McLean every attention and hospitality, and 
I find the Judge as attractive and estimable in private life as he is gracious 
and dignified on the bench. The society here, as elsewhere in America, is 
excellent, and confirms my preconceived opinions that good society is the 
same in Europe and in America. At the hands of the excellent Dr. Purcell, 
the Catholic bishop, I receive every indulgence ; he has conducted us in 
person through his various institutions, which are all prospering, and intends 
also to accompany us to visit his Ursulines. From him I learned the striking 
fact that there were present in the cathedral at high mass on Easter Sunday, 
600 persons who are converts to the Catholic faith. Here, as elsewhere, the 
Sisters of Mercy, by their devotion and virtue, afibrd us proof that even on 
earth there exist angelic natures. The cotton factories flourish in Cincinnati, 
and even at Madison, a small town we passed on the Ohio, I saw the black 
tall chimneys, indicative of the successful progress of the labor going on at 
its base. It seems to me, from all I have seen, that notwithstanding all the 
expected (may I say hoped for ?) approaches to free trade, that the manufac- 
tures of this country are now too firmly established to sulTer. I think you 
know me well enough to be assured that my zeal for the welfare of America 
is second only to that I feel for the prosperity of that fair and distant Isle to 
which I owe my birth, which has been the cradle of my children, and the 
happy home in which for eighteen years I have been the cherished wife of a 
husband to whom time has made me more dear. How ardently I wish that 
every feeling of affection which I shall ever preserve for the people of America 
were shared by my countrymen. 

I hope yet to visit Mrs. Catron— instead of challenging each other for the 
sake of the chairman, we will take your advice, and share his esteem and 
regard between us. He being our Oregon territory, and each lady having 
determined not to give notice — of course the treaty of joint occupancy must 
remain in force. Moreover, on my side, I shall refuse arbitration, either by 
citizen or sovereign — and I think Mrs. Catron will be of my mind, viz., that 
the division of a lover's heart is not a proper subject for interference by 
foreign powers. Should we ultimately find that we cannot get along with the 
joint occupancy, but that we are continually shouldering one another, as you, 
dear sir, are friendly to us both, will you give us permission to ask your 
advice, as to the most satisfactory mode of dividing equitably between us the 
heart and head of the honorable gentleman in dispute. I presume, of course. 



(312 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

that like the Oregon territory, he will be content with being contended for by 
two fair dames, without putting in one word about his own ultimate destiny. 

I hope, dear Mr. Buchanan, that I have not tired your patience. I am 
writing in bed, and still somewhat of an invalid ; separated from home, it is a 
source of great pleasure to write to one who has expressed so much regard 
for me as you have done. 

Believe me always, most sincerely and gratefully, 

Your obliged friend, 

Sarah Mttton MAtrRV. 

Will you give my love to Mrs. Plitt, and say to her that I wished for her 
presence much yesterday, when Judge McLean was eulogizing the talents and 
virtues of the Secretary of State. 

[from MRS. MAURT.] 

Washington, Friday Morning, 10 A. m., June 10, 1846. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan : — 

I would have called to see you this morning, but had so much fear of too 
frequently intruding on your patience that I abstained. 

I have had a very interesting conversation with Mr. Calhoun upon the sub- 
ject of his going out to England. He urged his age, his various engagements, 
the allotment he had already made of the few remaining years of his hfe, the 
use that he can render to his country by staying here, and many other rea- 
sons. I replied that his age was no objection, that he is not old, and that no 
duties could be higher than those he would fulfil by going to England; that 
the effects of his mission would be not only beneficial at the present moment, 
but throughout all future time; and urged him by every principle of patrio- 
tism, utility and devotion, to accept the trust. He yielded at length to my 
entreaties, and said : " If I can be convinced that it is my imperative duty, 
then, as duty is above all things, I will go." 

I can scarcely describe the emotions with which I heard this concession, 
and requested his permission, which was at once granted, to mention it pub- 
licly. Of course you are the first to whom I have named it. 

On my return, Mr. Calhoun will do himself the pleasure of visiting you, 
and has promised me the happiness of accompanying him. He wishes to see 
you in friendly style at your own house, and in an evening ; so I shall 
inquire from Mr. Plitt if you are at home. I hope to be here in less than 
ten days. 

I have seen Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Crittenden. Both highly approve of 
Mr. Calhoun for the appointment to England. Also Mr. Benton, who would 
cordially assent ; and Mr. Hannegan expressed the highest respect for Mr. 
C. The two first answered for their party and the country. Benton thought 
it would be a universally popular movement. Hannegan included his party in 
his own expressions of respect. 

I could not, my dear Mr. Buchanan, leave Washington happily witliout 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 613 

telling you these circumstances, and confiding them to your wisdom an 1 
experience for any use you may deem them ehgible. 

Looking forward to seeing you shortly again, I remain always, with tlia 
highest respect, your obhged and grateful friend, 

Sarah Mytton Maury. 



[from MRS. MAURY.] 

Washington, June 14, 1846. 
My Dear Sir: — 

I was sorry to find that you have suffered from indisposition. I went 
to Coleman's last night to inquire for you, but found Mr. and Mrs. PHtt 
absent. 

Will you tell me that you are well, or at least better ? and will you let me 
come and see you ? and say how soon. 

I have a letter, or rather a lecture, from the bishop this morning ; not on 
religion, but morality. He has, however, made me a proposition so singu- 
larly flattering and unexpected that I wish to tell you of it. 

If you are going to England, how delighted I should be if you were to go 
in the same steamer with myself and my son, the Great Britain of the first 
August. But perhaps you would have a ship of war. 

I think you would like England and the English upon a near acquaintance, 
and your sincerity of purpose and warmth of heart would interest their 
esteem and affections most strongly. But how could you be spared from 
home, for there is no other Secretary of State in the CaUnet ? My hopes of 
the Ministry to England, if you do not go, are for Calhoun, because he could 
set the people there right on the slave question, and also, I believe, he would 
do much to get the duties on tobacco reduced in England. 

Though the treaty (making) is on the 49th, I shall, in writing, enforce the 
superior claims of America, and treat the whole arrangement as a concession 
on the part of the United States. Yours it will be, yours it must be ; and 
however unpopular may be this doctrine in England, such inevitably will be 
the ultimate conclusion. To-morrow Mrs. Madison takes me under her wmg 
to pay my farewell respects to Mrs. Polk. I will also call on the President 
for five minutes before I leave Washington. 

The Emigrant Surgeon's Bill will be lost, but, thanks to the admoni- 
tions of the excellent bishop and to your expressions of praise and sympathy, 
I shall bear the disappointment without repining, and trust to do more for 
those unfortunates at a future time. 

How can I ask you to read this long note, and to see me too ? But you 
have made me bold by indulgence, for you have never refused me any one 
request, . 

Believe me, my dear Mr. Buchanan, most respectfully your sincere and 

grateful friend, 

Sarah Mytton Maury. 



614 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

[from MRS. MAURY.] 

Barnum's Hotel, ) 

Baltimore, Friday, July 10, 1846 ) 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan : — 

I received your kind and considerate note, and have laid it with the letter 
you wrote to me in New Orleans to carry home for my husband, 

Mr. Calhoun called at eleven, and stayed some time with me. Though I 
assured him over and over again that I only repeated, both to the President 
and to you, the exact words which he himself had used, and that I mentioned 
at the same time distinctly that the whole responsibility was mine, — and mine 
alone, — still Mr. Calhoun is fearful that you should misunderstand him — I 
therefore said that in a few days I promised myself the pleasure of writing to 
you, and that I would again mention to you his scrupulous delicacy of feeling 
on this subject. I thought of you, dear Mr. Buchanan, on Sunday, and 
wished that I could have been present at your interview — the conversation of 
two distinguished men is the highest privilege and advantage that a woman 
can enjoy, and I should have derived more pleasure from listening than I ever 
do from talking ; — though my reputation for silence is not, I fear, very well 
established — at least so says our playful friend Ingersoll. 

"We have visited Emmittsburg since we left Washington, and all the insti- 
tutions in Baltimore — among others the Penitentiary, where they permitted 
three English prisoners to come and speak with me — they were well looking 
men, all acknowledging the justice of their punishment, and apparently cured 
of their evil propensities. This evening we take the boat for Philadelphia, a 
cooler and pleasanter mode for travelling than the railroad, and shall arrive 
about four in the morning. After spending Sunday there we shall reach New 
York on Monday afternoon. 

This hotel has many guests at present, among them arc some Creole 
families — all very pleasant and intelligent — they are full of anecdotes of the 
war, and all the ladies are in love with the Captain-general La Vega. Mrs. 
Commodore Stewart, of somewhat eccentric character, is of the number, and 
informs me that the Mexican enjoys himself greatly, and is most hospitably 
entertained. 

How shocked you must have been at the death of Mrs. Ogle Tayloe. I 
had sat an hour with her on Friday. She was then very ill, and our conver- 
sation became serious. Our acquaintance bad been only general, and had 
entirely arisen from her hospitality towards me; but I imagine that often 
previous to solemn events, we become intimate and confidential, and thus it 
was with us, and truly she was a good and pious woman. From what I 
learned at Mrs. Madison's door on Saturday, there is much to fear both for 
her and her niece, and how sad it is to think of. Sometimes I am led to 
marvel at the singular favor which has been hitherto granted to me, that of 
perfect health to all my little ones, and restored health to myself and son 
durincc our loner absence from home. When I shall arrive there and find all 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. G15 

well, I shall not fail to write and tell you, for I flatter myself that the advances 
which I have made in your good opinion will never be obliterated by my 
absence, whether temporary or permanent, and truly I shall ever hear of you 
either as presiding in the councils of the RepubUc, or adorning the ease and 
elegance of private life, with sincere and heartfelt interest. 

I paid my respects to-day to the Chief Justice ; * be bestowed a delightful 
half hour upon me, and gave me his parting benediction and kindest wishes. 
His health is much improved since the winter. 

In Baltimore as in Washington the same perplexity exists about a Secretary 
of State. No one is spoken of, and it would almost seem that people do not 
realize your resignation. Must it be so? You know that in England we 
have abandoned the precedent of the minister's retiring on a change of meas- 
ures. Such, if I remember right, was the course of Earl G-rey, he withstood 
even the majorities against the Reform Bill, and continued at the helm. 

To make Mr. Calhoun feel satisfied that you should understand him thor- 
oughly, I have written the above, but you have encouraged me to speak freely 
with you on all matters, and therefore I shall add as my supplement to his 
message, that in case you should see the advantage of Mr. Calhoun's holding 
office, / sincerely hope that you and the President will make out a strong case, 
and overrule his delicacy ; besides, he is very powerful. My confidence in him 
is as unlimited as it is in you, for you are both equally noble, finely tempered, 
faitliful and pure. 

Dear Mr. Buchanan, do not forget me, for I shall relate in England the 
considerate solicitude which you have exercised in my behalf. At your hands 
I have received all the assistance, all the protection which I had anticipated 
from the minister of my country, and my advice to all who like myself are 
alone and unattended will be, trust yourselves to the courtesy of the Amer- 
icans, they will never fail you. 

Always believe me, most sincerely, most gratefully. 

Your English friend, 

Sarah Mytton Maury. 

P. S.— I think I should add in confidence to you that should any difSculties 
arise out of the Mexican war between the United States and England, Mr. 
Calhoun would consider it his duty, if requested by the President, to give his 
services in an official capacity ;-of course I leave it to your judgment, to use 
this information as you think best, and I believe Mr. CaUioun would at once 
acquiesce, should such a case present itself. 

[from MRS. MAURY.] 

Liverpool, November 3, 1846. 
My Dear Mr. Buchanan: — 

I am wearying to write you a long letter, and first let me offer you my 
best congratulations on the recent successes in Monterey ;-this Mexican war 



* Chief Justice Taney. 



616 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

must give you much anxiety, from the various difficulties which General 
Taylor has had to encounter in a country scarcely known, and where the ch- 
mate was new and therefore trying to his troops. I was delighted to observe 
that the President had made offers of peace, because such a step is worthy of 
a great, and powerful, and magnanimous nation ; thus a wise parent offers to 
his refractory child, or a forbearing friend to his companion, constant and 
kindly proposals of peace, pitying the recklessness and stupidity which con- 
tinue to prompt a refusal of their proffered tenderness. 

The ill-fated Great Britain carried rnyself and my doctor home in safety. 
Our passage was agreeable, and the recollection of it makes me feel much for 
the ship, and for her commander. Poor Captain Hawkens had taken leave of 
his wife, who was not expected to live many hours, just before he sailed. 
She has since rallied, bnt only for a season. In a few moments he seemed to 
lose everything that would render life desirable — his fortune and his fame, and 
the partner of his life. There is no doubt that the Great Britain had outrun 
her reckoning. My husband who is the chairman of the Marine Insurance 
Company has voted in flxvor of giving her a chance through the aid of a well- 
experienced engineer ; but nothing can be done until the spring, and she will 
have much to suffer during the winter, besides the danger of rusting. 

I have had a most pleasant chit-chat letter from Mrs. Plitt, giving me all 
the details of our various friends; I have also heard from the bishop who is 
still suffering from the refractory tooth, and still with extraordinary pertinacity 
refusing " to pluck it out, and cast it from him." I am going this day to 
write and upbraid his " holiness " with neglecting to practise what he 
preaches. Mr. Ingersoll tells me that he is again a candidate for Congress, 
and I most earnestly hope he will be successful on account of the vexatious 
affair which occurred in the spring. Nothing has contributed more to my 
happiness than your gentlemanly and considerate expressions of unabated 
regard for my guardian. His letter is like himself, unreserved in confidence, 
and always a most pleasant mingling of smiles and tears. 

I called with my husband to pay our respects to Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft. 
They had a stormy passage, and Mrs. B. was suffering from the effects of it. 
The American Chamber of Commerce, of which my husband is the treasurer, 
waited upon the minister with their best wishes and welcome. He made a 
very appropriate speech, and acquitted himself extremely well. His manners 
are less popular than those of McLane, but I predict that he will be highly 
esteemed and respected here. Mrs. B. is quite a nice woman, and the Amer- 
ican ladies have a naivete which I hear is much admired as a contrast to the 
sameness of manner which necessarily exists among the aristocratic ladies of 
an old country. They see none but the artificial phases of society. 

I have been in London a month, and have had an interview with the 
commissioners of the board of emigration, Mr. Elliot and Mr. Rogers. They 
entered fully into the subject of the Emigrant Surgeon's Bill. I told them your 
opinion, and gave them among other documents the report of the expenses 
of whaling vessels for sickness ; they regard it as a very important statement 



PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE DURING THE WAR. 617 

in our favor. I believe them botli to be ia earnest, and the more especially 
as they requested me to procure for them various kinds of information relative 
to the supply of surgeons having taken out diplomas in Liverpool, Dublin, 
New York, etc. Of course I have lost no time in setting the requisite 
machinery to work. The commissioners frankly stated that the shipowners 
would make the same difficulties that Mr. Grinnell had conjured up on the 
other side. As the bill will have to go through parUament, of course it will 
be some time before I hear anything from the board ; but as soon as I do, I 
shall hasten to inform you who have been so valuable an ally to me. 

Accompanied by my husband, I had afterwards an interview with Lord 
Palmerston, and after showing him the letter which I wrote in January last 
from Washington, on the subject of Pakenham's unfitness for his position 
there, I fortified the report by several anecdotes. The secretary looked per- 
plexed, heard me most patiently, and when I had ended my story, endeav- 
ored as well as he could to defend his representative. As far as respectful 
politeness allowed me to go, I entirely diSered from him, and I said that he 
was quite unequal in capacity to the men he had to deal with ; that he knew 
nothing of commerce ; received neither the Americans nor the English at his 
house ; had quarrelled with the chairman of foreign relations in the House of 
Representatives ; and in fact that this government should send one of their 
foremost men to Wasliington with rank, wealth, good manners, and ability to 
carry him through. 

Lord Palmerston then observed : 
" Well, they have got more than they bargained for." 
Mrs. M. — They will have the whole of Oregon very soon, my lord. 
Lord P. — Do you really think so ? 

Mrs. M.— Certainly, and the Pope is doing all he can to help them. He 
has just divided the Oregon into an archbishopric and eight bishoprics, and 
the Irish and German emigrahts will pour in by thousands. 
Lord P. — I had not observed that. Is it so, indeed ? 
Mrs. M. — Undoubtedly. 

Here laughing, I rose to take leave. The viscount Avas extremely cour- 
teous, and expressed much pleasure at having made my acquaintance. It i3 
somewhat strange that I should have had the opportunity of expressing these 
sentiments to yourself and Mrs. Walker in Washington, in the presence of 
the British minister, and also in England to the secretary for foreign afiiiirs. 

And now, my dear Mr. Buchanan, I am going to my old trade of begging 
favors, and have still a long story to tell you by way of introduction. I have 
wished to prepare a work with the title of " An English Woman's Opinions 
of America," in compliance with the gratifying wishes of my fiiends both 
here and in America ; but I cannot get this ready for some months, for you 
know I have eleven children, and found much to do for them on my return, 
besides I have had much to do for my husband in the way of business, and 
the daily congratulations of my numerous friends here to receive, and to 
return. 



G18 LIFE OP JAMES BUCHANAN. 

la the meantime, however, I am trying to get ready the '• Statesmen of 
America," that is, my own sketches of their characters, etc., with extracts 
from their works or speeches. While reading over to my husband the two 
charming letters you have written to me, it occurred to me that I would ask 
your permission to place them before my friends here to show that the Amer- 
ican statesmen are as elegant in their private correspondence as they are able 
in their public documents. I have made a mark with a pencil through the 
opening of the paragraph relating to Mr. Calhoun ; but I should dearly like to 
publish your opinion of him. Mr. Panizzi of the British Museum Library is 
in love with these letters, and he is head authority in all literary matters. I 
enclose them for your perusal, because I have thought you might wish to see 
them before granting me permission to publish them ; but whether you grant 
me this permission or decline it, pray restore me the letters. I cherish with 
jealous care every memorial of those who made me so happy when among 
them. 

My husband begs that you will accept his most grateful and respectful 
thanks for all your goodness to me. Forgive me, dear Mr. Buchanan, this 
unconscionable letter and its long weariness, and believe me always most 
respectfully and affectionately your friend, 

Sarah M. Maury. 

[from MADAME CALDERON.*] 

Newport, August Ist, 184G. 
Dear Mr. Buchanan : — 

As I see a letter for Calderon this morning in your handwriting, I think it 
as well to let you know that he has gone to New York on business, in case 
there should be any delay in his answer. Calderon tells us that there is some 
chance of your coming to New York, which I hope is the case. I am anx- 
ious to inquire into the progress of your domestic affairs, and whether I have 
more chance than I formerly had of finding Mrs. Buchanan when I call at 
your house. I think, now that you have settled Oregon and the tariff, and 
are in a fair way of disposing of Mexico, it is time for you to look at home, 
and bring about the annexation of a certain fair neighbor of ours. Newport 
is very cool : we have not had a single really hot day. I hope you have stood 
the heat of Washington better than Calderon did. We are living very quietly 
here as to society, but with bathing, riding, fishing, etc., pass our time very 
agreeably. We are at this moment nine ladies in one house, and no 
gentlemen. 

Pray remember me to Mr. Pleasonton and his family the next time you go 
there, and especially to my friend Miss Clementina. My sister and nieces beg 
their best regards, and I remain 

Yours very truly and respectfully, 

Fanny Calderon de le Barca. 



* Wife of the Spanish Minister. She was a Scotch lady, nee Inglis. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

1848— 1849. 

CENTKAli AMERICA— THE MOXKOE DOCTRINE. AND THE CLAYTON-BULWER 

TREATY. 



T 



O give an account of every public transaction with which 
ilr. Buchanan was connected as Secretary of State, would 
be impracticable within the limits of these volumes. But there 
remains one subject which must not be overlooked— the affairs 
of Central America, and the position in which they stood before 
the negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. 

The policy of Mr. Polk's administration towards the States 
of Central America and on the subject of the Monroe Doctrine 
was shaped by Mr. Buchanan very differently from that adopted 
by the succeeding administration of General Taylor, whose 
Secretary of State was Mr. Clayton, the American negotiator 
of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with Great Britain. In 1845, 
when the war between the United States and Mexico was im- 
pending, there was reason to believe that England was aiming 
to obtain a footing in the then Mexican province of California, 
by an extensive system of colonization. Acting under Mr. 
Buchanan's advice,"^ President Polk, in his first annual message 
of December 2, 1845, not only re-asserted the Monroe Doctrine 
in general terms, but distinctly declared that no future Euro- 
pean colony or dominion shall, with the consent of the United 
States, be planted or established on any part of the North 
American continent. This declaration was confined to :N"orth 
America, in order to make it emphatically applicable to Cali- 
fornia. The effect was that the British plan of colonization in 
California was given up. Two years afterward, when the 
Mexican war was drawing to a close, after the capture of the 
City of Mexico in September, 1847, Mr. Buchanan turned the 
attention of President Polk to the encroachments of the British 



G20 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

government in Central America, under the operation of a pro- 
tectorate over the king and kingdom of the Mosquito Indians. 
In his annual message of December 7, 1847, the President, after 
reiterating the Monroe Doctrine, asked for an appropriation to 
defray the expense of a charge d'aifaires to Guatemala, the 
most prosperous and important of the Central American states. 
The appropriation was made, and in April, 1848, the charge 
was appointed. But before his departure a state of things 
occurred in Yucatan, which made it necessary for the President 
to make a fresh and solemn declaration of his pui-pose to main- 
tain the Monroe Doctrine at every hazard against Great Britain 
and all other European powers. This was the war of extermi- 
nation waged by tlie Indians against the white population of 
Yucatan in 1847-48. If not actually incited by the British 
authorities, the savages were known to be supplied with Brit- 
ish muskets. The whites were reduced to such extremities 
that the authorities of Yucatan offered to transfer the dominion 
and sovereignty of the peninsula to the United States, as a 
consideration for defending it against the Indians, at the same 
time giving notice that if this offer should be declined, they 
would make the same proposition to England and Spain. By 
a special message sent to Congress on the 29th of April, 1848, 
President Polk recommended to Congress the appeal of Yuca- 
tan for aid and protection against the Indians, but he declined 
to recommend the adoption of any measure with a view to 
acquire the dominion and sovereignty over the peninsula. But 
it was necessary for him to announce what would be his policy 
should Great Britain or Spain accept a similar offer. Antici- 
pating that England might take advantage of such an offer to 
establish over Yucatan such another protectorate as that Mhich 
she claimed to exercise over the Mosquito coast, the President, 
at the close of his message, recommended to Congress " to 
adopt such measures as, in their judgment, may be expedient 
to prevent Yucatan from becoming a colony of any European 
power, which, in no event, could be permitted by the United 
States, and, at the same time, to rescue the white men from 
extermination or expulsion from their country." 

It then became necessary for Mr. Buchanan to consider how 
the removal of the British government from their assumed pro- 



CENTRAL AMERICA. 621 

tectorate over the Indians of the Mosquito Coast could be best 
accomplished. lie was convinced that the best thing to be 
done would be to re-unite the Central States of America in a 
federation, so that they conld aid each other and be in a condi- 
tion to receive aid from the United States. Accordingly, with 
the approbation of the President, on the 3d of June, Mr. 
Buchanan instructed Mr. Ilise, the new charge to Guatemala, 
as follows : 

" When the federation of the centre of America was formed, the Gov- 
ernment and people of the United States entertained the highest hopes and 
felt the warmest desire for its success and prosperity. Its government was 
that of a federal republic, composed of the five states of Guatemala, Hondu- 
ras, Nicaragua, St. Salvador, and Costa Rica ; and its constitution nearly re- 
sembled that of the United States. This constitution unfortunately endured 
but a brief period, and the different states of Central America are now politi- 
cally independent of each other. The consequence is that each of them is so 
feeble as to invite aggressions from foreign powers. Whilst it is our intention 
to maintain our established policy of non-intervention in the concerns of for- 
eign nations, you are instructed, by your counsel and advice should suitable 
occasions offer, to promote the reunion of the states which formed the federa- 
tion of Central America. In a federal union among themselves consists their 
strength. They will thus avoid domestic dissensions, and render themselves 
respected by the worid. These truths you can impress upon them by the 
most powerful arguments. 

A principal object of your mission is to cultivate the most friendly relations 
with Guatemala. It is now an independent sovereignty, and is by far the 
most populous and powerful of the states of the former federation. Whilst 
representing your Government at Guatemala, however, you will enjoy fre- 
quent opportunities of cultivating friendly relations between the United 
States and the other states of Central America, which you will not fail to 
embrace. 

The enemies of free institutions throughout the world have been greatly 
encouraged by the constantly recurring revolutions and changes in the Spanish- 
American republics. They are thus furnished with arguments against the 
capacity of man for self-government. The President and people of the 
United States have viewed these incessant changes with the most profound 
regret. Both our principles and our policy make us desire that these repub- 
lics should become prosperous and powerful. We feel a deep interest in their 
welfare ; but this we know can only be promoted by free and stable govern- 
ments. The enjoyment of liberty and the maintenance of private rights 
cannot be secured without permanent order ; and this can only spring from 
the sacred observance of law. So long as successive military chieftains shall 
possess the ability and the will to subvert subsisting governments by the 



622 LIFE OF JAMES BQCHANAN. 

sword, the inevitable consequences must be a disregard of personal rights 
weakness at home, and want of character abroad. In your intercourse with 
the authorities of Guatemala and other states of Central America, you will 
not fail to impress upon them our example, where all political controversies 
are decided at the ballot-box. 

I have no doubt that the dissolution of the confederacy of Central America 
has encouraged Great Britain in her encroachments upon the territories of 
Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, under the mask of protecting the so- 
called kingdom of the Mosquitos. We learn that under this pretext she has 
now obtained possession of the harbor of San Juan de Nicaragua — probably 
the best harbor along the whole coast. Her object in this acquisition is evi- 
dent from the policy which she has uniformly pursued throughout her past 
history — of seizing upon every valuable commercial point throughout the 
world, whenever circumstances have placed this in her power. Her purpose 
probably is to obtain the control of the route for a railroad and a canal be- 
tween the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, by the way of Lake Nicaragua. In a 
document prepared, as it is understood, by Mr. Macgregor, and printed by 
order of the British Parliament, which has been furnished to me by Mr. 
Crampton, her Britannic Majesty's charge d'affaires to the United States, 
Great Britain claims the whole of the sea-coast for the king of the Mosquitos, 
from Cape Honduras to Escuda de Veragua. By this means she would 
exclude from the Caribbean Sea the whole of Honduras south of Cape Hon- 
duras, and the entire states of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as well as the New 
Granadian state of Veragua. Under the assumed title of protector of the 
kingdom of the Mosquitos — a miserable, degraded and insignificant tribe 
of Indians — she doubtless intends to acquire an absolute dominion over this 
vast extent of sea-coast. With what little reason she advances this preten- 
sion appears from the convention between Great Britain and Spain, signed at 
London on the 14th day of July, 178G. By its first article, " His Britannic 
Majesty's subjects, and the other colonists who have hitherto enjoyed the pro- 
tection of England, shall evacuate the country of the Mosquitos, as well as 
the continent in general and the islands adjacent, without exception, situated 
beyond the line hereafter described as what ought to be the frontier of the 
extent of territory granted by his Catholic majesty to the English for the 
uses specified in the third article of the present convention, and in addition to 
the country already granted to them in virtue of the stipulations agreed upon 
by the commissioners of the two crowns in 1783." 

The country granted to them under the treaties of 1783 and 1786 was 
altogether embraced in the present British provinces of Behze, and was remote 
from what is now claimed to be the Mosquito kingdom. The uses specified 
in the third article of the convention were merely, in addition to that of 
•' cutting wood for dyeing," the grant of the liberty of cutting all other wood, 
without even excepting mahogany, as well as gathering all the fruits or pro- 
duce of the earth, purely natural and uncultivated, which may, besides being 
carried away in their natural state, become an object of utility or of com- 



CENTRAL AMERICA. 623 

merce, whether for food or for manufactures ; but it is ex^jrcs?!/ agreed that 
this stipulation is never to be used as a pretext for establishing in that country 
any plantation of sugar, coffee, cocoa, or other like articles, or any fabric or 
roanufacture, by means of mills or other machines whatsoever. (This restric- 
tion, however, does not regard the use of saw-mills for cutting or otherwise 
preparing the wood.) Since all the lands in question being indisputably ac- 
knowledged to belong of right to the crown of Spain, no settlements of that 
kind, or the population that would follow, could be allowed. " The English 
shall be permitted to transport and convey all such wood and other produce 
of the place in its natural and uncultivated state down the rivers to the sea; 
but without ever going beyond the limits which are prescribed to them by 
the stipulations above granted, and without thereby taking an opportunity of 
ascending the said rivers beyond their bounds into the countries belonging to 
Spain." 

And yet from this simple permission within certain limits to cut and carry 
away all the different kinds of wood and " the produce of the earth, uncultivated 
and purely natural," accompanied by the most solemn acknowledgment on the 
part of Great Britain that all the lands in question " belong of right to the 
crown of Spain,'' she has by successive encroachments established the British 
colony of the Belize. 

The Government of the United States has not yet determined what course 
it will pursue in regard to the encroachments of the British government as 
protector of the king and kingdom of the Mosquitos ; but you are instructed 
to obtain all the information within your power upon the nature and extent 
of these encroachments, and communicate it with the least possible delay to 
this department. We are also desirous to learn the number of the Mosquito 
tribe, the degree of civilization they have attained, and everything else con- 
cerning them. 

The independence, as well as the interests of the nations on this continent, 
require that they should maintain an American system of policy, entirely 
distinct from that which prevails in Europe. To suffer any interference on 
the part of the European governments with the domestic concerns of the 
American republics, and to permit them to establish new colonies upon this 
continent, would be to jeopard their independence and ruin their interests. 
These truths ought everywhere throughout this continent to be impressed 
upon the public mind; but what can the United States do to resist such 
European interference whilst the Spanish American republics continue to 
weaken themselves by division and civil war, and deprive themselves of the 
ability of doing anything for their own protection ? 



Mr. Hise was prevented bj illness and other causes from 
reaching Guatemala until a late period in Mr. Polk's adminis- 
tration, and before any despatches were received from him Mr. 
JPolk had ceased to be President. The plan wisely conceived 



624 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

by Mr, Buchanan and adopted by President Polk, for uniting 
the States of Central America in a new federation, which, by 
the aid of the United States, could, compel the surrender of the 
British protectorate, was not carried out by their successors, 
although it descended to them in the best possible shape. In 
the mean time, the British government, taking advantage of the 
wretched internal condition of those States, had undertaken to 
extend, the dominions of the puppet king of the Mosquitos far 
beyond their former pretensions, and in February, 1848, had 
seized upon the port of San Juan de Nicaragua, expelled the 
State from it, and thus deprived, her and the State of Costa 
Pica of the only good harbor along the coast. To counteract 
this encroachment and to enable the Central States, by uniting 
them, to demand the withdrawal of the protectorate asserted by 
Great Britain, was the purpose for which Mr. Hise was sent to 
Guatemala. Instead of taking up and carrying out this policy, 
the succeeding administration of General Taylor, without con- 
sulting the States of Central America, entered into tlie Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty, concluded April 19, 1850, the ratifications 
being exchanged July 4, 1850. 

It is necessary to make a brief analysis of this treaty, because 
Mr. Buchanan, when he became minister to England under 
President Pierce, had to do what he could to unravel the com- 
plications to which the ambiguous langiiage of the treaty had 
given rise. There M'ere two provisions in the first article of the 
treaty which need separate examination. By the first of them, 
the contracting parties stipulated that neither of them should 
ever exercise exclusive control over the ship-canal that was to 
be constructed between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the 
way of the river San Juan de Nicaragua, or erect any fortifi- 
cations commanding it. The treaty then proceeded to declare 
that neither of the parties shall ever " occupy, or fortify, or 
colonize, or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, 
the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America." One 
general objection to this provision was, that so long as it should 
remain in operation it would preclude the United States from 
ever annexing to their dominions any state of Central America, 
even if such state sliould desire to come into our Union. But 
the last clause of the first article of the treaty was the one which 



THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY. 625 

led to tlie subsequent controversy. Instead of a simple pro- 
vision requiring Great Britain absolutely to recede from the 
Mosquito protectorate, and to restore to Honduras, Nicaragua, 
and Costa Rica their respective territories, the treaty declared 
as follows : " Nor will either [of the parties] make use of any 
protection which either affords or may afford, or any alliance 
which either has or may have, to or with any state or people, 
for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any such fortifica- 
tions, or of occupying, fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa 
Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America, or 
of assuming or exercising any dominion over the same." 

It soon became the British construction of this clause that it 
recognized the existence of the Mosquito protectorate for all 
purposes other than those expressly prohibited. Under this 
construction, Great Britain claimed that she could still direct 
and influence the Mosquito king in the administration of his 
government ; and down to the time when Mr. Buchanan was 
sent by President Pierce as minister to England, this claim was 
still maintained. On the other hand, taking all its provisions 
together and interpreting them according to the fair meaning 
of the stipulations as applied to the facts, the treaty was under- 
stood in this country to bind the British government not to 
exercise in any part of Central America any "dominion," 
either through the name and authority of the titular king of the 
Mosquitos, or otherwise ; or in other words not to exercise 
dominion, either directly or indirectly. Manifestly the treaty 
was destined to be a source of discord between Great Britain 
and the United States ; and when, as will hereafter be seen, it 
devolved upon the administration of President Pierce to meet 
the British construction, there was an imperative necessity for 
Mr. Buchanan's services as minister to Great Britain, in order 
that this and other pending questions between the two govern- 
ments might be adjusted Avithout further hazard of more serious 
collision. 



NOTE. 

On pa?e 459 of this volnme, it should have been stated that the charjrc of " treachery " 
made by Mr. Clay and the Whigs generally against President Tyler, was chiefly based on 
the assertions th.at the first Bank bill (passed August 6th, 1841), was framed by Mr. Ewing, 

I.— 40. 



C26 LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

Secretary of the Treasury, and approved by the President and his Cabinet ; that it was 
vetoed on the ground of essential alterations ; that the second bill was framed to meet his 
special objections, was privately submitted to him and approved before its passage, but 
vetoed afterwards. The central point in the Whig charge is that Mr. Tyler vetoed a 
bill which he , had promised to approve, and which was first submitted to him in order 
that its terms might be altered, or that the whole might be abandoned, if he could not 
approve it. 

It has not been my intention in this work to express any opinion upon the conduct 
of President Tyler in relation to the Bank bills. In the Life of Mr. Webster, the reader 
will find, at pages 69 to 80 of the first volume, his explanations of the whole difficulty. 
But since page 459 of the present volume was written and stereotyped, I have thought it 
proper to advert, without comment, to the precise character of the Whig charge against 
Mr. Tyler, lest it might be said that I have omitted to refer to an important part of ths 
history. 



